Vandread: Eternal Future
by SarikOstheim
Summary: The war was over.The Harvest was defeated.And Hibiki just spent four months on the most boring assignment in the universe.Now,a man claiming to have almost no memories comes along and informs Magno's pirates that the Earthlings are retaliating.Personally.
1. Chapter 1

Hibiki stepped off of the shuttle, relieved. It was great to be back on the _Nirvana. _Home.

Since the defeat of the Harvest fleets, Hibiki, Duelo, Bart, B.C., and Dita had been stuck on Taarak. The pirate base, or technically, former pirate base, run by Magno Vivan had been declared by both the Taarak and Mejere governments to be a neutral ground, a place for Men and Women to integrate their respective societies into each other.

The problem was that Magno's pirates had consisted exclusively of Women, with the exception of Hibiki, Duelo, and Bart in more recent times. So, it turned out that everyone who went to Taarak earned the privilege of interviewing thousands of selectees from among the Male population in order to find the ones that they personally believed to be the most compatible for reintegration. Hibiki had been bored out of his mind for the first week with all of the pointless paperwork. He thought it would get better when they got around to doing the live interviews. Sooner they got done, the sooner they could go home.

It didn't.

The entire time, Hibiki had to deal with Men who, frankly, weren't ready to accept that Men and Women were actually of the same species. He was constantly teased about his association with the _Female_ pirates. On more than one occasion, Hibiki had started an all out brawl with the selecties, often ending with multiple injuries for both participants. It just wasn't easy to do a job when the people you were working with wouldn't take you seriously.

And Dita. It wasn't that he regretted bringing her along; in fact, there were times he was glad she was there. But at other times, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. While her happy, bubbly attitude might have been a welcome sight on the _Nirvana_, it brought nothing but trouble on Taarak. An incident came to mind involving a particularly stubborn general, who was a veteran from the often constant battling between Taarak and Mejere.

A shiver ran through his spine as Hibiki looked down at his arms. While the bruises were healed, he could still feel those boot prints, as if they were engraved into his very bones. Truly scary what a Male general and a few colonels could do BEFORE they decided to kill you.

As he walked forward, he thought about his relationship with the redhead. What had, and what could, become of it? He had seen a side of her on Taarak that he normally only experienced for what seemed like moments during the journey on the _Nirvana_. Even though the Male and Female governments had agreed to stop fighting and begin reintegrating their societies with one another, there were many, if not the majority of, Men who were not ready to accept this. Dita, technically the only Woman with them, had faced persecution that Hibiki could have only imagined at before then.

However, Dita faced it with the same optimism she did with everything, and for a short time, she persevered. But after about a month, she was starting to break. By then, she came up with the crazy plan to disguise herself. While she was far easier to disguise than many of the other Women Hibiki had encountered, she was completely unwilling to part with her hair. Hibiki thought its length was a bit more than slightly ridiculous, as parts of it fell down to her thighs. But she was adamant about it. Case closed.

Thus, the genius plan only worked for a few days. While it wasn't uncommon for Men to grow out their hair, the longest Hibiki had seen anyone grow theirs was Duelo, whose hung just past the mid-section of his back.

But, with each others' and the group's support, Hibiki and Dita both made it back in one piece, both physically and sanity wise, though by no means unchanged.

Hibiki was headed for the Men's section of the ship, where he had been told his old quarters were waiting. They had been untouched since his departure, and that's where he was to room until something more suitable opened up. He didn't mind. They were home, after all.

He had just exited the hangar when two of the most annoying words came echoing down the corridor.

"Mister Alien!" Dita yelled. "Don't leave me!"

"Damn," Hibiki mumbled under his breath. "I coulda swore she was asleep."

Hibiki braced himself as he was impacted from behind by Dita, who grabbed him around the neck in a chokehold. He had grown a little during his time on Taarak, so he and Dita were about the same height, now. That made it a LITTLE easier to take her blows.

"So, Mister Alien, are you going to keep your promise?" she asked, poking her head over his shoulder.

"It's Hibiki," he corrected with a sigh. He had matured a little on Taarak and found that he didn't particularly like being scolded by certain Men for what they perceived as his mistakes. While Dita took whatever crap he threw at her and smiled, he figured it probably wasn't a good idea, regardless. Karma, what-goes-around-comes-around, that kind of stuff.

"All right, _Hibiki_," she said. "Are you going to keep your promise?"

That was another amazing thing that had happened on Taarak. She had actually learned to use his real name. On occasion, that is.

"Maybe later," he replied. "I have to get unpacked."

"Then I'll help!" she said, releasing Hibiki from her choke hold.

Hibiki turned around to face her.

"That's probably not a good idea, with all of the new crew," Hibiki told her. He made sure to look her in the eyes as he said it, to show his sincerity. He knew it wouldn't matter to her either way, but it mattered to him. The world was changing. So would he.

"All right," she huffed in the childish way she often did.

Hibiki turned back around and began walking down the corridors towards the elevator. It would take a few minutes to get to the Men's section.

* * *

The man woke up, dazed. Something was wrong with him. Everything was hazy. He couldn't think at all. He didn't even know who or where he was.

Suddenly, several alarms went off all at once, and most of the bridge displays turned yellow or red.

Reflex kicked in, and he attempted to correct the problems that his ship was experiencing, but it just wasn't something he could fix on his own. He would need to dock somewhere for a while so he could perform repairs. And from the looks of it, attempt may end up being all he could do. Something had fried most of the ship's systems, including him, apparently.

He unlatched the restraints and kicked himself away from the pilot's chair, causing the man to float to the ceiling. He crawled along until he reached the tiny corridor behind the bridge. He pulled himself by the light fixtures until he reached the small engineering room. Once there, he activated the backup computer, which took forever to boot due to its age. However, the older design was durable enough to survive whatever had happened, so he wasn't complaining.

A moment later, his fears were realized. The main reactor was fried. He was running on the redundancy systems, and those only had a battery life of about a week. Then he would be stuck on emergency power, and that would be the end of it.

He shut down every unnecessary system aboard the small craft, including the crystalline matrix that contained his personal AI. It would be useless right now, as the main computer was non-existent. He hadn't taken the time to modify the AI's network to link with the emergency systems. That was something he would get around to fixing, in one lifetime or the other.

He caught himself as he thought that. One lifetime or the other? But, he soon shrugged it off as the ship became noticeably colder, and his mind became even more groggy as the oxygen level began dropping.

He quickly pulled himself to the makeshift medical bay in the living area, located between the bridge and the engineering section. Nothing special. Just a small, two meter wide room that he had placed a bed and a few medical supplies in. He grabbed one of the medical kits and floated himself back to the front of the ship.

After settling himself back into the pilot's chair, he began rummaging through the supplies that he had in hand. He didn't quite know what he was looking for, but something told him that what he needed was in there.

Gauze. No.

Anesthetics? No.

Antiseptics? No.

Blood Clotter? Only if he wanted to kill himself.

Chloroform? Definitely not.

Potassium chloride?

Lysergic acid diethylamide?

Heroin concentrate?

Condoms?!

How the hell had he come by this medical kit? He quickly decided he did NOT want to know.

But, a few more moments of rummaging revealed what he needed. Nutrient fluids and a single syringe marked "Hibernation Inducer".

The man quickly injected all of the liquids into his arm, then settled back as a sudden wave of fatigue hit him. But he had more work to do, and something told him that he had another half hour or so before he fell unconscious.

He brought up the bridge controls. Luckily, the event hadn't disabled the holographic projectors. The entirety of the ship's systems, which were now few and far between, were at his disposal. There were currently two systems that were a must in order for him to survive until help arrived. A distress beacon and the deflector system. After locating working devices, he began pulling himself through the ship.

A working beacon was not hard to locate. Apparently, the ship had a drop system for long-range communication buoys. All he had to do was pull one out of the launcher and lace it with a nearby outlet. It appeared to be functioning properly. After programming the launcher to eject the remainder of the objects at a rate of one every three days, he moved on to the harder of the two tasks.

As he reached the outer sections of the small ship, the man suddenly seized up as a massive headache hit him. His entire body went stiff, and he was afraid that the hibernation was already setting in. But, through his own willpower, he was able to start moving again, though his movements were shaky and anything but precise.

The man scurried around the deflector generator, looking for some way to jury-rig it to the backup power supply. The bridge and engineering displays had indicated that the device was undamaged, and would be able to generate a field around the ship sufficient enough to prevent meteoroids and other floating objects from damaging the hull. But it was directly connected to the main reactor, and apparently, whoever built the ship deemed it insignificant enough that it wasn't included among the emergency systems.

But, after ripping up a few panels in an attempt to find one of the cables leading to the backup power supply, he found something even better. An OUTLET to the backup power supply. Maybe the ship's creators weren't so stupid after all.

He went about displacing several of the deflector generator's massive cables, and was rewarded ten minutes later by a consistent hum from the working device.

Satisfied, he floated himself back to the bridge. After rummaging through the floating mass of medical supplies, he found the antidote to the hibernation inducer and kept a firm grip on it. If anyone found him before he woke up, they would need to be able to wake him.

He had just finished reprogramming the remainder of the ship's systems when his entire body seized up, and darkness overtook him.

* * *

B.C. stood aboard the _Nirvana_'s bridge, overseeing what few functions that were running. Since the ship was in dock, and had been for the past few months, sensor operation and flight control use were at a minimum. Hopefully, the ship would get to fly out of here sometime soon. Except for the contention between the old Female crew and the new Male members, everything was all too quiet.

B.C. was about to leave the bridge for the mid-day meal when an alarm went off. She brought up the sensor display on the main screen, but nothing showed up. She was about to quell the alert when she noticed a small object appear at the edge of the Mejeran magnetic field. And it was transmitting an Earth identification code.

"All crew and pilots, to their stations!" B.C. yelled.

* * *

Hibiki had just arrived at his room when the ship's alarm went off.

"All crew and pilots to their stations!" yelled the Commander's voice over the ship's intercom.

Hibiki dropped the load he was carrying and ran back in the direction from whence he came. By the time he reached the hangar, all of the other pilots were in their Dreads and Vanguards. Hibiki ran up to his own Vanguard, easily distinguishable by its gold plating, and jumped inside of the cockpit.

Moments later, he found himself flying through space, moving into formation with the other Vanguards from the _Nirvana_.

During the final battle against the Harvest fleets, the Men pilots of the Taarak Vanguard wings had proven to be aggressive and effective fighters. Hibiki hoped these particular pilots would prove to be as much of a boon.

"Vanguard Team A, form up on me," Hibiki ordered, taking charge immediately.

Instantly, three Vanguards broke off from the main force and formed up in a triangle formation around Hibiki's Vanguard, with him in the center.

"So, umm, where's the enemy?" one of the pilots asked.

"I don't know..." Hibiki replied, scanning all the Vanguard's sensor equipment.

"Hey!" he yelled after opening a channel to the _Nirvana_. "What the hell is this supposed to be? A homecoming prank?"

"We detected an object at the edge of the magnetic storm," B.C. informed him, her face appearing on one of his screens. "It was transmitting old identification codes that our ship's records show to be of Earth origin."

Hibiki swallowed. He thought they had already defeated the Harvest. There were more? If that was the case, they were going to be even smarter this time through. And probably more powerful.

"Meia, I want you to take the Dreads ahead with Vanguard Team A," the Commander ordered. "Keep the other Vanguards back to defend the _Nirvana_."

"Roger that," Meia complied. "Everyone, you heard her. Vanguard Team A, you're with us. Keep up, if you can."

And with that, Meia shot forward in her Dread, followed by the entirety of the _Nirvana_'s fighter wing.

"You're on!" one of Hibiki's pilots yelled, charging his Vanguard forward through space. Soon after, the rest of the formation was in hot pursuit, with Hibiki in the rear. He didn't care. He could speed past them any time. And since nothing was out there, he had nothing to worry about.

"_Nirvana_, I'm transmitting a visual," Meia reported over the comm.

Hibiki sped up a little, soon forcing his way past the other Vanguards and catching up with the Dread wing. He quickly spotted Meia's fighter, which was slowly circling a small object of some sort. It was about the size of a Vanguard's mid-section, and shaped like half of an hourglass. It was just floating there, some sort of signal pulsing outwards every time the small red light on top of the dome part flashed.

"What kind of UFO is that?" Dita asked, her Dread also circling the object.

"It's a subspace transmitter," Captain Magno answered.

"Captain!" Hibiki heard the Commander say. "I'm sorry. I thought you were resting."

* * *

"I was, until the alarms woke me," she replied in a slightly irritated tone.

"I apologize," B.C. said.

"It's nothing," the Captain assured her. "Now, how long ago did you detect the object?"

"About twenty minutes," the Commander replied. "I put the ship at full alert and sent out the fighters as soon as I received the first transmission."

"And what does that transmission say?" Magno asked.

"It simply gives an identification code and the time of the beacon's launch," B.C. informed her.

"What is the identification code?" Magno inquired.

"The format is similar to that of the _Ikazuchi_'s code before the Men split the ship," B.C. informed her. "We're still trying to decode it. It's been difficult, due to our inexperience with old Earth formats."

"Why don't you ask Pyoro?" sarcastically said an annoying voice from the bridge's entrance.

The doors slid closed, and a small, egg-shaped robot floated towards the Commander. Supposedly, it, or he, was a navigational assistant aboard the colony ship _Ikazuchi_ during long trip to the system in which Taarak and Mejere resided, but since then, something had damaged his systems, causing him to be integrated with the Paksis, the ship's living power supply, and giving him a somewhat annoying and obsessive personality.

"I wasn't aware that you were prepared to resume working aboard the _Nirvana_," the Commander replied. "I thought you were visiting the nursery."

"And now, I am done," Pyoro told her. "Upon hearing the alarm, I downloaded the stream of information that the beacon was transmitting. And I found out what it is."

"What?" the Commander asked impatiently.

"Now, you'll have to be nicer if I'm going to..." the robot started.

"You will tell us this instant, or I'll have you used for spare parts aboard the fighters!" the Commander yelled as she grabbed the floating menace.

"It's a cry for help," Pyoro told her in a whiny and fearful tone.

"From who?" the Commander asked, releasing Pyoro.

"_Crimson Eternity_," Pyoro answered in a mystified tone.

* * *

"How long ago was this beacon sent out?" Magno asked.

Hibiki waited for the answer as he started at the object. He could have sworn he had seen something like this before.

"Two weeks ago, in a few hours," the Commander responded.

"It's not a beacon," Pyoro replied. "It's a transmitter."

"Essentially the same thing," Magno responded. "They can transmit pre-recorded messages to locations up to three light-years away. If the ship and the transmitter have fallen away from each other, there's a good chance those poor souls will never be found."

"Just one," Pyoro said.

"How would you know?" the Commander asked.

"Because I'm talking to the ship," Pyoro answered. "There are four more transmitters in the magnetic storm, providing a communication link with it."

"And where is the ship?" Magno asked.

"I'm don't know," Pyoro responded. "I can't trace the beacon's locations from here. We have to follow them."

"A fool's errand," the Commander remarked. "We'll contact the planetary governments. If there's anyone still alive by the time they get around to looking for it, then good for him."

"I'll go," Hibiki volunteered.

The Commander's face appeared on one of his screens.

"This is not something you can just dive into without thinking, Tokai," the Commander scolded. "You remember when we were last in there. You can't see anything visually, and it's a total communication's blackout."

"If someone has come all this way from Earth, I personally would like to know what they're up to," Hibiki told her. "If we're getting signals from those transmitters on this side of the storm, who's to say that there isn't an entire line leading back to Earth? He might be some sort of advance scout."

"All the more reason we should let the military take care of it," the Commander reasoned.

"Let him go," Magno told her.

"Captain?" B.C. asked, turning to face her.

"Hibiki is right," the Captain told her. "If someone personally came all this way from Earth, it's not good news for us. Have Gascogne take Pyoro and one of the resupply ships and follow Hibiki."

"Yes, ma'am," B.C. complied.

Hibiki smirked. He had wanted something to happen. Now it had.


	2. Chapter 2

Hibiki guided Vandread Jura along the path set out by his navicomputer. The Vandread was currently projecting a shield around Gasko's transport, along with Meia's and Dita's Dread fighters.

"Are we getting any closer?" Jura asked. "I can't take this anymore!"

Hibiki could empathize with her. They had been flying for nearly a day straight without rest, penetrating deeper into an uncharted part of the magnetic field. They passed what Pyoro claimed to be the second to last marker several hours ago, but immediately afterwards, the signal began jumping all over the place. One hour, the signal would be emanating a few thousand kilometers away, the next, it would be hundreds of thousands away. Hibiki had a feeling that the signal was being bounced all over the place by the giant storm, and that they were flying in circles trying to find it.

"Shut up and keep your eyes open," Hibiki said irritably. "We don't know what's waiting for us out here."

Jura sighed.

"A Woman has certain things she has to do, you know," Jura started in a complaining tone. "Eating, bathing,..."

"Shut the hell up!" Hibiki yelled. He was exhausted, and in no mood for dealing with Jura's antics.

"Cut it out, both of you," Gasko ordered. "We're all tired. Don't take it out on each other."

"You're not the one piloting the Vandread!" Hibiki yelled. "This isn't exactly easy work!"

"Neither is listening to your bickering," Gascogne replied.

"That's it," Hibiki yelled. "I've had enough!"

And with that, Jura and Hibiki's crafts broke apart.

"Dammit kid!" Gascogne yelled. "Now look what you've done!"

Hibiki watched as the resupply ship dove sideways, narrowly avoiding a chunk of ice twice the size of her craft.

"We're close!" Hibiki heard Pyoro say excitedly over the comm. "It's somewhere a few thousand kilometers ahead of us! For real, this time."

Hibiki followed after the resupply ship, which avoided another, larger chunk of ice. Suddenly, ice masses of various sizes began frequenting the area.

"Can't see a damned thing through this mess," Gascogne remarked. "There's no way we'll find it like this."

Hibiki flew away from the transport as the group flew up on a thick layer of ice chunks. He narrowly managed to avoid them all, but the objects battered the resupply ship's shields, one penetrating and smacking across the bulkhead.

"Uh oh," Gascogne said all of the sudden. "Trouble."

Hibiki looked at his radar, but spotted nothing. Nothing but ice.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"We're completely surrounded," Gascogne told him. "And my radar shows something solid ahead almost two kilometers thick."

Suddenly, Hibiki heard a scream over the comm. Dita's.

"Dita, what's the matter?" Hibiki asked, trying to spot her Dread through the opaque storm.

"I just hit something," Dita answered. "And I'm stuck."

Hibiki began darting through the storm, trying to locate her. But the interference was screwing with his sensors, bouncing her Dread's signal all over the place.

Suddenly, he flew up on something big. And solid.

Hibiki turned his Vandread's legs towards the gargantuan ice mass, firing his engines at full. He slammed into it hard, though luckily, not at full speed. However, his Vandread began sticking to it immediately, ice forming around the feet.

Hibiki pulled out his Vandread's long sword and cut himself free from the mass, then began skimming along the surface. Dita's signal was clearer now. The ice seemed to be directing it.

"Dita!" Hibiki yelled, trying to locate her.

"You just passed me," she told him.

"What?" he said, puzzled. He shoved his feet in front of him and began flying backwards.

And suddenly, there she was. Her Dread was completely encapsulated by ice, the blue color of its hull barely showing through the translucent material.

"Shit!" Hibiki remarked as a small ice chunk flew past his Vandread, slamming into the giant structure.

Suddenly, he realized that the ice was slamming into it all over the place. As if it was being attracted to it.

"Guys, Dita's stuck," Hibiki said into the comm. "I'm going to try to break her free. The rest of you need to find a way out of this. Something's pulling the ice towards this mass."

"There IS no way out of this," Meia reported. "The ice is getting thicker by the second. We're going to be pulverized whether we stay here or try to fly off."

Hibiki growled in frustration as he crashed full force into the ice that was covering Dita's Dread. The impact did little to damage the ice, only breaking off a few shards. Her fighter remained encased.

"Dammit!" Hibiki yelled as he took his sword and cut into the ice at the same place he impacted. He pulled the sword free, breaking away enough ice to expose the rear of Dita's fighter. After pulling himself free of the ice forming around his Vandguard's legs, Hibiki forced his sword into the breach, slowly pulling away at the edges of the ice, which was already reforming. He just had to clear enough to make sufficient contact with her Dread.

"Dita, we have to combine!" Hibiki told her as forced his Vanguard through the small breach.

There was a flash of light before Hibiki's eyes as the two fighters merged, and soon, he was presented with the sight of the Vandread's cockpit, with Dita seated directly in front of him.

"All right, let's go!" he yelled as he placed his hand over hers on the controls.

With his burst of determination, the Vandread forced its limbs outward, breaking away literal tons of ice. Hibiki and Dita flew the Vandread away from the forming ice structure, pummeled by ice the entire time.

"Guys, where are you?" Hibiki asked calmly, no longer concerned about their situation.

"We're flying along the surface with the resupply ship," Meia informed him. "Jura's currently docked with it. She took some damage just a moment ago."

"We're going to blow a hole through the ice," Hibiki informed her. "Keep out of our firing solution."

"Roger that," Meia complied.

"Ready?" Hibiki asked Dita.

She looked around at him and nodded, a determined smile on her face.

"Then let's go!" he yelled.

The cannons stored on the Vandread's back rotated upward, taking their place on the mech's shoulders. A moment later, a yellow glow pulsed through them, and they fired, the energy beams cutting through the layers of floating ice and impacting the giant mass's surface together. The structure reacted as if an asteroid had hit it, clouds of ice crystals flying up into what might one day be the atmosphere of the natural construct.

"Go, now!" Hibiki yelled to the others.

They dove the Vandread forward towards the hole its cannons had just made. When they were about to enter, Hibiki manage to spot Meia's Dread and Gascogne's supply ship, Jura's fighter attached to its underside.

As they flew along the almost perfectly round tunnel, Hibiki noticed that the edges were freezing over quickly, causing it to shrink. At this rate, they weren't going to make it to the other side in the Vandread.

"Dita, we have to break up," Hibiki told her. She looked back at him, a slightly sad look on her face, but she nodded.

A moment later, Hibiki's Vanguard and Dita's Dread separated. Hibiki began darting around through the tunnel, speeding as fast as he could to the end without hitting the debris from the Vandread's attack.

By the time they had arrived at the final quarter of the tunnel, it had shrunk to the point where Hibiki was having a difficult time maneuvering. He was barely going to make it out, which meant that there was no way that Gasko's transport could make it to the end.

"Meia, the tunnel's freezing over fast," Hibiki told her as he slowed down. "Let's merge and see if we can open it up a little more."

"I was thinking the same thing," Meia agreed.

Hibiki reversed the direction of his Vanguard's thrust, and soon made contact with her Dread. The two fighters' bodies merged together, and he found himself inside the cockpit of the bird-like machine, seated directly in front of Meia.

"Dita, how far out are you?" Hibiki asked. He didn't want to accidentally hit her.

"I can see the end," she told him.

"All right," Hibiki told said. "Get clear of the tunnel as soon as you can."

Suddenly, Hibiki heard Jura scream over the comm. Gasko's transport had grazed its bottom half along the tunnel, where Jura's fighter was stored.

"This isn't the way I wanted to go!" Jura complained. "Get me out of here!"

"Cut it out!" Hibiki yelled as he and Meia forced the Vandread forward, grazing the walls themselves.

Suddenly, it shot forward at speeds excessive of any known fighter, smashing through the solidifying ice. Pain shot through Hibiki's entire body as the Vandread broke the ice with brute force, causing significant damage to itself, his link with the machine sending feedback through his own body.

As the Vandread neared the tunnel's end, Hibiki spotted Dita's Dread. He was afraid they would impact it when she quickly jerked her fighter sideways out of the tunnel, flying parallel with the ice structure's surface. Hibiki and Meia shot out of the tunnel a second later, a cloud of ice crystals forming around the exit. They had completely pulverized the ice with their Vandread.

A moment later, Gasko's resupply ship shot out of the exit, Jura's fighter still intact underneath.

And on the other side, the area was completely clear, except for the magnetic storm.

"I'm not doing that again," Gascogne remarked.

"We should find somewhere to rest," Meia suggested. "There's no way we can keep up like this."

"I know," Gascogne replied. "My sensors are showing a harbor in the storm up ahead. We can anchor ourselves there for the next day or so."

"Good," Hibiki remarked tiredly.

Hibiki broke his Vanguard away from Meia's Dread, then followed Gascogne's transport towards the alleged harbor.

Twenty minutes later, they flew up on something that was completely unexpected. A perfect sphere was formed around some sort of ship, probably the one they were looking for. The craft was about fifty meters long, and looked like it had seen MUCH better days. The engines were sparking, with several cables and fuel lines exposed. What appeared to be some sort of turret on the side was in pieces, the weapon it once housed unidentifiable. And the general condition of the ship's exterior was flat-out horrible. Crimson red paint was dulled by heavy amounts of grime and rust, and the remains of some sort of crest were located immediately behind the front of the ship on the side, though it was either heavily faded, or a sign that Hibiki simply didn't recognize.

"Great," Gasko remarked. "A shield."

"We could blow through it," Hibiki suggested.

"And we'd be destroying our nice little rest stop," she told him. "Give me a while. I'll figure out what frequency its shields are on."

Hibiki sighed, then leaned back into the pilot's seat and dozed off.

* * *

An hour later, Hibiki woke up when something hit his Vanguard. Apparently, he had fallen asleep.

He looked over his monitors, and found Dita's fighter rubbing up against the side of his mecha.

"Dita?" he asked sleepily. "What are you doing?"

Nothing came back over the comm. He shifted the Vanguard slightly and peered into her cockpit, finding her sleeping peacefully inside.

Hibiki smirked, and was about to lean back in his seat when he noticed something. Meia's Dread, Gasko's transport, and the disabled ship were gone.

"Dita, wake up!" Hibiki yelled into the comm. "Dita!"

He saw her stir a little, but she still wouldn't wake up.

"Dita!" Hibiki yelled as he lightly smacked his Vanguard's hand on her cockpit.

She stirred, then look up sleepily.

"What is it, Mister Alien?" she asked tiredly as she reached for her controls.

"Everyone's gone!" he told her.

"What?" she yelled, her Dread suddenly shooting forward.

"Dita, wait!" Hibiki yelled as he flew after her. One advantage that Dreads had over Vanguards was flat out speed. It sometimes made it difficult for him to keep up.

"Miss Gasko, Meia, Jura!" Hibiki could hear Dita yell over a general channel. "Where are you?"

"We're right here," came Gascogne's irritated voice.

A Hibiki flew a few hundred meters more and spotted the resupply ship, with Dita's Dread floating nearby.

"Where's Meia?" Dita asked.

"She's near," Gasko replied. "Now shut up so I can work on this."

"You still haven't cracked it?" Hibiki questioned.

"No!" Gasko yelled. "It's like the shield doesn't even exist! There's some sort of faint energy reading coming from the ship, but it's nothing I'm familiar with."

"Well, then, let's do this the old fashioned way," Hibiki said as he dove towards the ship, drawing his Vanguard's swords.

"Hibiki, wait!" Gasko yelled, but Hibiki was already at the shield.

And passed right through it.

"What?!" Hibiki yelled as he hit his engines in full reverse, barely preventing impact with the ship.

"You never thought to try that?!" he yelled at Gasko.

Dita moved her Dread slowly towards the ship, passing through the shield just as easily as Hibiki.

"Uh...no?" Gascogne replied, truly stumped. "It never would have occurred to me."

Hibiki sighed.

"Well, let's find Meia and get anchored," Hibiki suggested. "Maybe there's some beds on board."

"I'm already here," Meia told them, flying into visibility through the magnetic storm.

* * *

Hibiki waited impatiently as the hatch cycled, making various hissing and groaning noises. There was some sort of launch bay on the back of the unknown ship, in the center of the engine bank. All Gasko had to do was pull up and seal one of the cargo bays directly to it, providing them with an easy way in and out.

After what seemed like an eternity, the light went green, and the hatch opened. Apparently, there was a habitable atmosphere on the other side.

"Be careful," Gascogne told everyone as she readied the gun she was carrying. "There's no gravity on the other side. God knows what, or who, is floating around."

"I'll be fine," Hibiki remarked arrogantly. "I just want to get this over with."

He boldly stepped through the door, and suddenly found himself flying towards the hangar bay's ceiling.

"I warned you," Gascogne said, stepping through much more lightly, causing herself to float centimeters above the floor.

"Ya, ya," Hibiki mumbled as he lightly impacted some sort of storage rack. He was about to launch himself back to the floor when he realized there was a vehicle in the contraption. It looked vaguely similar to a Vanguard, but there was no way he would mistake this machine as one.

"Interesting," Meia remarked as she noticed Hibiki staring. She launched herself towards the ceiling, a distance of several meters, and grabbed onto the storage device.

"Know what it is?" she asked.

"How would I know?" he replied irritably.

Meia simply sighed and pushed herself away from the cage, drifting along the ceiling to another.

"Looks like there's two more storage containers, but they're both empty," Meia reported.

"He probably went broke," Gascogne said. "A lot of this scrap floating around looks pretty new. He probably had a refit just before he ran into whatever trouble that he did."

"I would have never known," Hibiki remarked sarcastically.

"Let's go," Gascogne ordered, obviously irritated at Hibiki's remarks.

"Where's Jura?" Meia asked as she floated towards the hangar's exit.

"She's out like a baby in the copilot's chair," Gascogne told her.

"Don't blame her," Meia said with a yawn forming.

Hibiki remained silent as he floated behind Meia. He stopped himself in the doorway of the exit when he noticed Dita wasn't with them. He scanned the hangar, finding her staring at the rack containing the unidentifiable mecha.

"You coming?" he asked her, trying to keep irritation out of his voice.

Dita stared at the machine for a moment longer, then kicked herself towards the exit.

"It's all so different," she remarked. "Even more different than going on that Men ship for the first time."

Hibiki wasn't one to disagree with her. Even though grime and dust covered portions of the walls and floors, the parts that were still exposed revealed some sort of strange, luminescent material. It looked like the interior of the entire ship was made of polished stones of various colors, but when Hibiki tapped the wall with his fist, it had a clearly metallic ring to it. It almost seemed organic in nature.

As they arrived at the next section of the ship, Hibiki was relieved to find it wasn't all that different from a chamber on the _Nirvana_ or a Male ship.

"Looks like this is engineering," Gascogne said after she booted up a computer, one of many that dominated the cramped room.

"Guess there's only so many ways you can make a ship, right?" Hibiki remarked.

"What do you mean?" Meia questioned, beating everyone to the question.

"Haven't you been paying attention to the rest of the ship?" Hibiki asked. "The layout is completely different from any ship or space station that I've ever been on. And the material that makes up the interior is just plain odd. This is the only part that seems similar to any other ship."

"Well, this ship may not be around for much longer," Gascogne told him. "Most of the systems are pretty banged up. Whoever was flying managed to keep life support and the deflectors working, and that's it."

"Deflectors?" Meia asked. She could figure out what it meant simply from the name, but she had never heard of a device by that name.

Gascogne pulled up some sort of blueprint on the computer and looked over it for a moment.

"It's somewhat similar to the shields we use, but designed with non-combat applications in mind," she told them. "More for keeping meteors and debris away from the ship on a day to day basis, rather than lasers and missiles."

"So why could we pass through it?" Meia asked.

"It looks like whoever was onboard was expecting a rescue," Gascogne told her. "He had the device set to let ships through."

"All the more reason to be suspicious," Hibiki remarked.

"Can you find a layout to the ship?" Meia asked, ignoring Hibiki.

Gascogne hit a few keys, and a three dimensional hologram of the ship's interior suddenly appeared a few centimeters above their heads.

"Wow!" Dita said excitedly.

"Looks like this ship isn't all about looks," Gascogne remarked.

"It certainly isn't," Meia agreed as she studied the layout. "It looks like the quarters and a sickbay are just ahead, and the bridge is located a short distance in front of that."

"Let's make sure the rooms are clear before we move on," Gascogne suggested. "So that there aren't any nasty surprises waiting for us."

She floated down the corridor leading towards the front of the ship, Hibiki, Dita, and Meia not far behind.

"Stay back," Gascogne ordered everyone as she drifted up to the first room. She forced the sliding door open, then poked her gun inside.

"Nothing here but medical supplies," she reported.

After checking the three remaining rooms, they found nothing. Not even personal belongings.

"Seems we're all clear," she told everyone. "Time for the bridge."

The four pulled themselves along another corridor, which had several ladders lining the walls leading to other parts of the ship.

"Anyone home?" Gascogne yelled as she neared the bridge, peering around with her gun. She pushed forward slightly, causing her to drift through the bridge, then suddenly stopped herself by grabbing onto a chair next to her.

"Well, looks like we know what happened to him," she remarked.

Hibiki allowed himself to drift onto the bridge, soon spotting the problem. A Man, not much older than him, was floating near the front of the room amidst a mess of unidentifiable wrappers and syringes. And he didn't appear to be breathing.

Gascogne pulled herself along towards the body, then grabbed it by the leg and pulled it to the floor. She placed her middle and index finger to his throat.

"No pulse," she reported a few seconds later.

"Come on, let's go Dita," Hibiki suggested, pushing himself towards the back of the drifted, where Dita drifted.

"Is he...?" she asked.

"Ya," Hibiki replied, pulling her along back towards the corridor.

* * *

Meia rummaged through the floating mess, trying to make sense of its contents. The language used to label the materials appeared to use aspects of both the Men's and the Women's languages, making it somewhat difficult to identify everything. However, this did confirm that this ship was originally from Earth, or a planet whose culture emulated Earth's.

She was particularly curious about the small plastic envelopes that were floating about. She was unable to distinguish the contents, as there was no word that she was aware of that was even remotely similar in her language. Meia was afraid to forcefully open the package, as there was no telling what might be inside.

She continued rummaging, finding syringes full of substances that she couldn't identify. She eventually came across a small, clear package of some sort labeled "Heroin Concentrate", filled with a white substance of some sort. Wondering what it was, Meia opened it, and a fine white powder drifted out.

"What's this?" Meia remarked out loud. She reached out and ran a finger through the substance, then put it to her nose and smelled it. She was immediately overwhelmed by a rancid smell of which she had nothing to compare to.

"I wouldn't have done that, if I were you," Gascogne told her. "Not everything here looks like it has a medical purpose. I think that some of these are poisons."

"That would explain the smell," Meia choked, resealing the package as drowsiness set in, probably from fatigue. She waved her hand through the remaining powder, diffusing it into the air.

"Well, we should probably move this somewhere else," Gasko suggested, pointing at the corpse. "No one should have to look at a dead body for long. Does things to the mind."

"There was a medical ward towards the center of the ship," Meia told her. "It should be fine there."

Gascogne nodded, then pulled the body from the floor and directed it towards the back of the bridge, Meia not far behind. As they floated into the corridor, Meia noticed something fly from the Man's hand. She snatched it out of the air and held it in front of her face.

"Hibernation Stimulant," Meia said out loud.

"What?" Gasko asked, turning her head.

"He was holding this," Meia told her, holding the syringe out in front of her so the registry chief could see it.

"Well, I'll be damned," Gascogne remarked as grabbed one of the ladders and came to a stop. "Give that to me."

Meia flicked the object towards the older woman, causing it to spin through the air as it drifted. Gasko carefully grabbed it and checked it for herself.

"That explains everything," she said. "He forced himself into hibernation so that the life support would last. He could survive for months in a state like this."

Gascogne popped the cap off of the syringe, then stabbed it into the side of the Man's neck.

"What are you doing?!" Meia asked in a concerned voice.

"Waking him," Goscogne replied.

They floated there for a moment, waiting for a response. Meia thought that this was complete nonsense when suddenly, the Man's eyes shot open and he gasped for air. A few seconds later, his breathing calmed, and he fell unconscious.

"Better get him to a bed," Goscogne said. "He's gonna feel like shit when he wakes up."

Gasko pushed the man ever so slightly, causing him to start drifting down the corridor. She followed a second later, with Meia just behind her.

A minute later, they managed to maneuver the man into the tiny room, but came upon another predicament, as the lack of gravity was causing him to float all over the place, rather than staying above the bed.

Gasko sighed.

"Probably should get a power link up," she remarked wearily. "See if I can get us some gravity."

"Need help?" Meia asked.

"Nah, I'll be fine," Gascogne replied. "You get some rest. I'll be right behind you."

Meia was about to argue the point when a funny feeling came over her, and she suddenly felt like laughing, for no apparent reason. She managed to control it to a low giggle.

And she was suddenly very groggy. Earlier, she had thought that it was from lack of sleep, but this was sudden, rather than gradual.

* * *

"What's so funny?" Hibiki heard Gasko ask in an irritated tone.

At the moment, he was sitting next to Dita in the engineering room, who had snuggled up against his shoulder and was staring off in the distance. Normally, he would have shoed her off, but he was so tired that he truly didn't care. And he had to admit, it wasn't all that bad being with her like this.

Hibiki began to grow worried when he heard Meia burst into all out laughter in the living area of the ship.

"Are you alright?" Gasko inquired, a hint of fear on her voice this time.

"That was...just so...funny," Meia slurred in between laughs.

Dita lifted her head, looking in the direction of the quarters.

"Do you think we should see what's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know," Hibiki replied quietly. He waited a moment for Meia to calm down, but her laughing only grew in intensity. "Probably should."

He began to rise, holding onto a console with one hand, and pulling Dita up with the other.

By the time the two made it to the quarters, Meia was floating wildly through the air, hugging her chest as if she were constantly out of breath. And her eyes: the irises were shrunk down as small as humanly possible. She had stopped laughing, at least, reducing it to mere giggling. Now she was just waving a hand through the air, as if she were drawing something.

"She's scaring me," Dita remarked.

Gasko sighed.

"That stuff she sniffed must have been a drug of some sort," she said. "All we can do right now is make sure she doesn't hurt herself. She should pass out in a little while."

Gascogne eyed Meia as she pulled past her, towards the engineering section.

"Do that for me, would you guys?" Gasko asked.

"Okay," Dita replied.

Hibiki simply sighed. It was probably assumed that he would be helping her.

* * *

The man woke up all of the sudden, completely disoriented. He didn't know where he was, what he was doing here, nor what his own name was.

What he did know is that everything was sore. He was braced up against a wall in a partial resting position, a bed beneath him. His head hurt like hell, and for some reason, he doubted it was from his awkward position.

A few minutes later, he attempted to stand, but let out a yell as he fell forward and smacked his head into the door. Or should have. Instead, it slid open, and planted his face in the bulkhead of the ship that he didn't know he was on.

He rubbed his head as he looked up. If this was a dream, it was an awfully realistic one.

Then, he spotted another door opening from one of the other rooms, and a blue-eyed girl with ridiculously long red hair slunk out, as if she were sneaking away.

_I really must be dreaming_, he thought to himself. If that was the case, his following actions would be of no consequence. He could enjoy this while he could.

"Did you come all the way out here just to see me, Beautiful?" he asked, a slight slur to his voice.

The girl just stood there in shock.

"Surprised?" he asked, moving closer.

"Um...." she stuttered nervously as he advanced on her, walking backwards towards the wall.

"Now come on, don't be like that," he said, wrapping his left arm around her shoulders as he got close enough. "Let's go back to my place and have some..."

He never had a chance to finish. A door behind him slid open and someone, probably a male, yelled, and the man fell into blackness as something remotely foot-shaped planted itself in the back of his head.


	3. Chapter 3

The man woke up with a splitting pain in the back of his head. As he realized where he was, he began wondering how he got into the medical ward. The last thing he remembered was floating around the bridge, about to pass out.

He carefully sat up, rubbing a hand up and down his back as pain shot up his spine. It was confusing to not be able to remember anything. He knew how to run his ship, he knew how to nail a target at five hundred meters, he was even mentally practicing how to hack a computer out of an apparent habit. Training that seemed to be ingrained into his very being.

But he was just now remembering his name, and having flashbacks of the events preceding the moment he when he had awoken on his ship's bridge, the vehicle dead in the water at the time. He was apparently fleeing from something when a seemingly familiar ship jumped in on him and attacked his own with a new weapon, knocking most of the equipment offline. He only managed to escape because he had already been plotting a jump at the time of the attack. With the last little bit of energy left in it, the ship somehow had gone through with the commands and jumped away, though it returned to normal speed only a few seconds later, leaving him floating in the middle of nowhere, with most of his systems overloaded. Of course, he hadn't know this when he had woken up. He now assumed that since he was floating when he regained consciousness, and not strapped into the pilot's chair, that he had suffered a significant concussion.

And now, it seemed, someone had found him, as there was no other way he had somehow moved halfway through the ship.

After his blood pressure leveled, and the pain subsided a little, the man swung his feet off the bed and stepped through the medical bay's door, which was centimeters from him, due to the small size of the room.

As he left the medical bay, he heard a slight yell, and looked over to see who it was. Rummaging through his food supplies in the tiny, open galley was a redhead girl in her mid or late teens. And she had just noticed him.

Suddenly, he remembered that dream he had last night. It was mostly a blur, but he remembered the hair and the body shape. This was definitely that girl.

Or maybe it wasn't a dream. He had actually done that? Some part of him was extremely disgusted with himself, at his temporary moment of weakness, and lack of perception.

But, deciding that since things were probably already bad that he had nothing to lose, he moved towards the galley casually and confidently, opening the small cooler built into one wall. He felt like he had just run a forty kilometer marathon in the middle of a desert. And, for some reason, he had a feeling he had, at one point or another.

After literally breaking the top off of a plastic bottle and guzzling the entirety of the water within, he removed a towel from above the sink and neatly unfolded it, then carefully and precisely wiped the excess water away from his lips. He refolded the towel and placed it on the counter, then pulled open one of the pantries and sought out any food that he could find. After pulling out a large brown package, he noticed that the girl was still in the galley, watching him intently with piercing blue eyes, her back to the wall.

"Thank you for saving me," the man courtesied as he tore a well proportioned strip off the top of the package.

The girl continued to watch him in silence. She didn't seem threatening, so he decided to try something. He rummaged around inside the MRE, pulling out its contents one by one. Eventually, he found what he was searching for.

"Here," he said, holding a square, plastic wrapped package to her. "It's chocolate."

She continued to watch him, never responding.

"They don't have chocolate where you're from?" he asked, tossing the package towards her.

She caught it clumsily, then returned to staring at him. The look on her face implied that he had just called her an idiot.

He sighed as he popped the heating pack on the main dish of the MRE. A few seconds later, he opened the container with practiced care and ease. The smell nearly overwhelmed him, but he restrained himself from tearing into the meal, this one apparently consisting of noodles and some sort of seafood sauce. He was probably going to be eating a lot more of these for the next week or so.

"I apologize for my inappropriate actions from earlier," he told the girl sincerely as he grudgingly set the meal on the counter. "They were completely out of line."

He closed the small distance between them and fell down onto one of his knees. It was now that he realized how the girl was dressed. She was clothed in a short, black undershirt that was complimented by some sort of half robe that draped lightly around her shoulders. She wore nothing else except some sort of nearly knee length skirt, though the design was completely foreign to him. He now understood why some part of him was attracted to her, earlier, as he had to admit, the clothing complimented her body well. But he was above such things, and quickly put the thoughts out of his mind.

"I hope that this will not have strained relations between us," he told her as he took one of his savior's hands in both of his.

He didn't think he was hitting on her, or doing anything particularly threatening. He was simply asking forgiveness in the best way he knew how. Whatever planet this young women was from was probably the first place he should go. He had to start his mission somewhere, one who's objectives he was barely starting to remember.

"Um, thank you," she said.

He noticed the girl was blushing, so he decided to back off a little. He didn't want anyone, including her, to get the wrong idea.

Apparently, it was a bit late, as he felt a blade of some sort poke into the side of his head.

"Hold it right there, asshole," he heard a woman's voice say. Apparently, she had heard about his little incident earlier.

He looked over with his eyes at his apparent captor. There stood erect a women in a black dress of an extremely revealing style, with blond hair falling around her shoulders. He noticed the bottom half of a scabbard poking out of the open side of her dress along her legs. The shape indicated a saber of some sort.

_Do all of the women from this world dress like this?_ he thought. It was pointless, slightly ridiculous, and could cause problems of many sorts, depending on what planet you were at.

"It's not what it looks like," the man told her as he turned his body slowly, raising his hands. "Now I would appreciate it if you would get that nice saber of yours out of my face."

"Name," the woman ordered.

"Put that sword down, and I might tell you," he said. "But if you don't mind, I would like to eat my meal in the mean time."

He started to turn towards the counter, and the woman poked the saber closer to his face in an attempt to look threatening. Her mistake.

The man reflexively jerked his head slightly to the side as he grabbed the sides of the sword with the palms of his hands. He gripped the blade slightly and pulled, yanking the weapon away from her. As he guided the weapon over his shoulder with one hand, he grabbed underneath his arm with the other, grasping the weapon's handle. A second later, he was holding the blade to the woman's throat with a small stream of blood dripping onto the floor from his hand.

"I asked you nicely," he told her as he moved his face closer to hers. "When someone asks you to do something, it might not be a bad idea to do it."

And with that, he pulled the weapon from her throat and dropped it to the floor. His stomach was beginning to cramp, so he walked over to the counter and grabbed up his meal.

"Now, please forgive my lack of manners for a moment," he courtesied.

And he began shoveling the pasta into his mouth with his hands like a starving animal. Less than ten seconds later, he had the entire container of food chewed and swallowed.

"Much better," he remarked as he pulled the cooler open and grabbed another bottle of water, though taking the time to twist the cap off properly this time. After taking a small sip, he replaced the cap on the bottle, then picked up a napkin from the MRE's contents and cleaned his face.

After he placed the napkin in a waste bin, he picked up another of the contents from the MRE, a green-colored bread roll of some sort wrapped in clear packaging. He carefully tore the packaging open at the seams, causing it to break into two, nearly perfect halves. He pinched a piece of the bread off and placed it in his mouth. It tasted like a water plant grown in human sewage. He grimaced as he forced himself to swallow.

It was then that he noticed both women were staring at him, though in shock or amazement, he didn't know.

"What, never seen a man eat before?" he asked casually as he broke off another piece of the roll.

"Do you think after what you pulled last night, you can just act like nothing ever happened?!" the blond yelled.

The man finished chewing the bread, then casually pinched off another piece.

"I already attempted to apologize to the insulted party," he replied calmly. "Though in my own defense, I was not myself. I HAD just come out of hibernation."

* * *

Meia walked sluggishly out of the small room, plagued by a headache and an incessant itching sensation all over her skin. However, she was only able to relieve herself at the neck, as her flight suit covered most of her body.

When her senses had somewhat returned to her, she realized that a short distance away, Jura was yelling at a Man, with Dita standing silently nearby. Meia concentrated for a moment, and realized this was the man that she and Gascogne had been moving.

"And that justifies what you did last night?!" Jura yelled, obviously hyped up about something.

"He really didn't do anything," Dita said in the Man's defense.

"That's not what I heard," Jura replied, her voice rising in pitch with each word.

"Look, once more, I'm sorry!" the Man said, putting a lot of emphasis on the sorry. "Perhaps YOU would like to go through the entire process of hibernation? It can be arranged."

"Can't you all just shut up?" Meia croaked, bracing herself against the wall outside of her door.

Everyone looked in her direction, noticing her for the first time.

"Is she all right?" the Man asked, walking towards her.

Meia balled her right hand into a fist and pointed it at the stranger, holding her thumb down on her laser ring's trigger. As it began to glow a bright purple, the man stopped and raised his hands in submission.

"There's no need for hostility," the Man told her in a calming and soothing voice, at least to Meia. "But you look like you got into something you weren't supposed to. I can help"

"What did he do?" Meia asked gloomily as she grabbed her head with her left hand. The light and sound was really getting to her. And she just couldn't stop itching.

"He was hitting on Dita last night," Jura told her as she picked her saber up and re-sheathed it. "Thankfully, Hibiki knocked him out before anything could become of it."

"And I will thank him personally the next time I see him," the Man responded spitefully. "He kept me from doing something that I may have regretted for a long time."

"People like you don't regret for long," Meia remarked. "They get themselves killed off before they have a chance. Now turn around, and walk. Slowly."

"Look, I know what's wrong with you," the man told her as he complied. "And I have something that might help."

"Get moving," Meia ordered him. He began walking forward, slowly.

"So where exactly are we headed?" he asked as he walked along.

"The brig," Meia told him.

"I don't have a brig on this ship," he responded, turning his head just enough to make eye contact. "But I do have a medical ward stuffed full of supplies, including pain killers designed specifically for what you're going through."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she asked as they continued forward, towards the aft of the ship.

"Headache, drowsiness, disorientation, sensitivity to light, and from the looks of it, chronic itching, right?" he asked. "You got into something called heroin, and your body is reacting badly to your first exposure. I have a solution to that."

"And what would that be?" Meia asked him.

"Methadone," he told her. "Made from the same stuff as heroin, but counters most of the reactions you're experiencing."

"And where is this 'Methadone'?" she asked. For some odd reason, she felt like he was pulling her chain.

"In the medical ward," he told her. Again.

Meia sighed.

"Let's go," she said, lowering her hand. Soon after, she was using it to scratch at her throat and face. The itching was driving her insane.

"Just like that?" the Man questioned.

"Only if you find me that pain killer," Meia replied irritably.

"My pleasure," the Man courtesied in a sincere tone. "This way."

As he motioned his hands, Meia smirked slightly, then took the invitation.

A few minutes later, the Man had rummaged through most of his medical kits, coming up empty.

"Hurry up," Meia said impatiently, scratching at her neck. "This is killing me."

The Man sighed.

"We'll just have to use something else," he remarked as he pulled several containers from the mess on the medical ward's bed. After gathering the items in his arms, he left the medical ward, walking back to the galley and dropping everything on the counter.

"Now," he mumbled as he picked up a clear bottle. He twisted the lid off, pulled out a single capsule-shaped object, then resealed the container.

"Take this," he ordered Meia, forcing the object into her hand as he opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of water.

"What is it?" she asked, holding the object up for her to see.

"Never taken a pill before?" the Man asked.

Meia stared at it for a moment more. She noticed that some of it had broken off into a fine powder on her glove.

"It's morphine," he told her. "Not the best thing to take in your condition, but since it's only your first time on heroin, you should be fine with just a small dose."

He handed her the bottle.

"All you have to do is swallow it, and you'll start feeling better really fast," he informed her.

Meia stared suspiciously at the Man. There didn't seem to be anything threatening about him, except that he was being far too helpful, and she didn't even know his name.

"It would be stupid to try and poison you," he remarked. "You have at least three friends aboard, so I'm a dead man if I try anything."

So he didn't know about Gascogne yet. Good.

Meia twisted the cap off of the water container and swallowed her pill, the entire bottle of water not far behind.

"Now that that's settled," the Man said as he turned back to the counter and grabbed up another object. "This should help with the itching."

He held a tube of some sort up to her, though it was closed off at both ends.

"Primitive, I know, but it works," he assured her, opening one end of the tube, revealing some sort of hole in it. It appeared it was some pressure-based release mechanism.

Meia snatched the tube from the Man and held it up to her mouth, about to squirt some of the fluid into it, when the Man grabbed it away from her.

"You rub it on your skin," he told her softly.

"And how would you suggest I do that?" Meia asked.

"Go somewhere private, have one of your female companions help out with the hard-to-reach places," he replied in a serious tone.

Meia sighed, then walked off towards the room she was previously sleeping in.

"I can do it myself," she huffed. "Keep an eye on him, Jura."

"My pleasure," the blond replied.

* * *

"I probably should have mentioned how to engage the lock," the man remarked in a slightly sheepish tone.

"It won't matter if there aren't any lechers walking in on her," Jura replied accusingly.

"Hey, I'm not that kind of guy," the man replied as he opened up the pantry and pulled out the closest package he could find. A long tube of crackers. And they were past the expiration date.

_Oh well_, he conceded as he ripped the package open and began cramming the square crisps into his mouth.

"What are you doing?" Jura asked, disgusted.

"Have you ever gone two weeks without food before?" he asked her after he swallowed a mouthful. "It's horrible."

"I can cook you something," the girl apparently named Dita offered.

"Thank you, young lady," he courtesied. "But I'm afraid there is nothing aboard with which to cook with."

"Young lady?" Jura asked, confused. "You can't be much older than her. It's considered rude here to put people down like that."

He grimaced internally. He didn't exactly understand why he had remarked as such, just that it seemed completely appropriate, for some reason.

"My mistake," he apologized. "Where I'm from, generally referring to a female as a lady is considered a compliment, no matter the circumstances. I simply assumed she was younger than I."

"Not by much," Jura said under her breath.

The man simply shrugged, then resumed consuming his crackers. After he finished the package, he properly disposed of wrapper and went about cleaning himself once more with his hand towel. It was then that he realized he had forgotten another of his manners.

"I am so sorry," he said apologetically. "Would you like something to eat?"

Jura simply raised an eyebrow at him, not even bothering to waste breath on him anymore.

"I'm sure there's something in here that's not too awfully foreign," he remarked quietly as he began rummaging through the pantry. He was less concerned about what type of meal the various containers held, and more about how old they were. He began to realize how long he must have been away from civilization for all of his food to be this old.

Eventually, though, he found some rations that were only a couple months old, according to the dates stamped on them. He pulled out all of the mostly unmarked brown packages that he could find and set them on the counter in front of him.

He noticed the girl named Dita had moved closer to him during his rummaging, and was examining the plain, brown packages intently.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Meals Ready to Eat," the man replied. "You open them up, pop the heating pack, and a few seconds later, you have a hot meal. It's like magic."

He handed her one of the packages, hoping it was something acceptable to her tastes.

After she tore into the MRE and began removing its contents, he turned himself around, holding out another mystery meal towards the blond.

"I would would truly appreciate it if we didn't get started off on the wrong foot," he told her.

"I don't take candy from strangers," Jura replied, quoting a statement he would expect to hear from a young child.

"My name is Malik Browning," the man introduced himself, having just recalled the name a few minutes ago. "And yours?"

The blond kept a straight face as she snatched the package from his fingers.

"Jura," the woman replied plainly, not by any means amused.

* * *

Hibiki woke up abruptly, smacking his head into the wall. During the night, he had had the most disturbing dream. He was just glad it wasn't reality, and hoped it wasn't a premonition of something to be.

He sat up straight when he realized where he was. He had been conversing with Dita for a good portion of the night, and apparently, they had both dozed off in the small quarters. That much he was sure of.

And now, she was gone. He looked at the watch he had picked up on his last visit to Taraak and almost freaked. It was nearly evening. He had slept for nearly fourteen hours straight.

Hibiki jumped out of the bed and rushed out of the small quarters. He nearly fainted from the sight before him. Sitting in a circle in front of the galley, eating some sort of unidentifiable food, were Dita, Jura, and the Man he had knocked unconscious the previous night.

"What the hell are you doing, you bastard?!" Hibiki yelled as he rushed towards him.

"That is no way to speak in front of women," the Man remarked as he casually took another bite of some sort of strange food off of some strange form of dinnerware.

"Keep out of my business!" Hibiki ordered as he walked up and kicked the man's meal out from in front of him.

"That wasn't very nice," Dita told Hibiki.

"You really could take a few pointers from him," Jura remarked in a giggly tone. "He's quite informed in the art of courtesy."

Hibiki's mouth dropped open. He was expectant of Jura to fall for the next person to flatter her, but Dita too?

"What the hell is going on here?!" Hibiki yelled aloud.

"We're simply having a meal together," the Man informed as he began cleaning up the mess Hibiki had made of his meal.

Hibiki looked around, and noticed several large packages had been torn open and emptied of their contents. Some sort of space rations, he assumed.

"That's mostly me," the Man told Hibiki as he disposed of the wasted meal. "My body will require excess nutrients in order to make up for the weeks of hibernation I was in."

Hibiki simply stared at him with a confused look on his face. This couldn't be the man he knocked out last night. Just no way.

"Mentioning that," the Man said as he extended a hand. "Thank you for preventing me from having done something utterly stupid and regretful last night."

That confirmed it. Definitely not the same man.

Hibiki took note of the hand extended to him and remembered the hand signs Dita had done when they first met. He began repeating them.

"What are you doing?" the man asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Nothing," Hibiki quickly as he completed the handshake.

"Now, would you care to have anything to eat?" the Man asked Hibiki.

Hibiki stared at the taller man. He was just too nice. To the level of creepiness. He wondered if any of the girls had noticed this.

"I'll take that as a yes," the Man remarked, forcing one of the meals into his hands.

A few minutes later, Hibiki sat on the floor with some sort of brown lump surrounded by a creamy white substance before him.

"What the hell is it?" he asked, an eye twitching. It didn't look all that appetizing.

Malik, as the Man called himself, looked up from the meal he was gorging and glanced at the food before Hibiki.

"I didn't realize they made that anymore," he remarked quietly. "That, my friend, would be the classic Earth meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes."

Hibiki backed away from the food ever so slightly. It didn't look great, didn't smell great, and it certainly didn't sound consumable by human beings.

"I think I'll pass," Hibiki said.

"Aw, now come one, Mister Alien," Dita pleaded as she set down her dessert container, which held some sort of red, roughly cone-shaped fruit in a bright red jelly. "You should at least give it a try."

"I'll be fine," Hibiki told her.

Dita sighed and picked up the dish of food that Hibiki refused to eat. She cut off a piece of the brown mass and placed it in her mouth.

"See?" she said with her mouth still full. "It's fine."

She cut off another piece and put it up to Hibiki's face, but he refused to eat it.

"Now, come one," Dita cooed as she moved closer.

"No," Hibiki told her.

"Don't be like that," Dita said softly as she put her other hand to Hibiki's face.

"No!" Hibiki yelled. "Leave me alone!"

Dita forced him to the ground as he put a hand up to push her away, trying to get the food into his mouth.

"No!!!" Hibiki yelled one last time as she finally got the block of food into his mouth.

Hibiki chewed and swallowed it reluctantly.

"See, it wasn't that bad," Dita remarked, still on top of Hibiki.

"I guess not," he agreed gloomily.

Malik let out a little chuckle.

"What's so funny?" Hibiki demanded to know as he sat up, Dita still close to him.

"You two are intimate, right?" he asked bluntly.

"Huh?" Hibiki asked, a confused look on his face.

"Together?" Malik questioned.

Hibiki noticed that Dita was staring at him with those big blue eyes of hers. Like she was expectant of something.

"I...guess," Hibiki replied.

"So you're not sure?" Malik inquired in an amused tone.

"No?" Hibiki said, still not completely sure about what he was asking.

"Than I guess you won't mind if I get to know your friend a little better..." the man said in an obviously joking tone as he reached over towards Dita.

"Keep your hands to yourself!" Hibiki yelled as he shoved past Dita and lunged at Malik.

But Malik, still sitting, grabbed both of Hibiki's arms and restrained him, ending his advance.

"So that would be a yes?" Malik asked. "It won't do you any good to be indecisive, nor will it do you any good to lie. The truth will come out, sooner or later."

Malik released Hibiki and lightly pushed him away.

"And don't worry," Malik assured him. "I have no interest in what is someone else's."

Both Hibiki and Dita glared at the older Man for a moment more as Hibiki sat down next to Dita and finished his meal.

"That came out wrong," Malik remarked.

* * *

"I won't!" Pyoro yelled, trying to struggle free of Gascogne's grasp.

"You have, you are, and you will!" she yelled. "Otherwise we'll never get the ship moving. And I DO NOT plan on staying here for the rest of my life."

"NO!!!" Pyoro cried as he grasped the edge of the resupply ship's hatch. He was not going to hook up with that computer again.

"There is absolutely NO rational reason why you shouldn't!" Gascogne grunted as she yanked the egg-shaped robot free. "Quit acting like a child."

"He said he would kill me if I went back!" Pyoro yelled. "And what would Pyoro Two do without me? Pyoro..."

Last night, when Gascogne had linked him up to the ship's main computer, some sort of weird construct had attacked him digitally. It was big, red, had horns and a tail, it's skin was covered in some sort of letters, and it had told him it would take his code apart string by string if he ever came back, all before he was rudely, and somehow, painfully, ejected from the system.

"Look, if we don't get this ship going, you'll never see that baby again," Gascogne told him softly. "So, you help me out, and you'll get back within a couple of days."

Pyoro thought about. It did make sense. If he could somehow find a way around the construct, he should be safe.

"Then we must use another way," Pyoro told her. "Then he can't kill me."

Gascogne sighed.

"You are probably the first and only machine that cares about dying," she sighed as she released him.

Pyoro's eye displays changed, the representative iris's becoming extremely dilated.

"And why shouldn't I?!" he yelled.

"You're a machine," Gascogne remarked as she began walking into the hangar. "Most machines do what they're told without argument or back-talking their operators."

"Pyoro..." the robot sighed. This was going to be hopeless.

As they traveled deeper into the ship, Pyoro detected some sort of commotion ahead. He detected the voice patterns of Hibiki, Dita, and Jura, along with one other. One that belonged to that stranger. It was unmistakable, as he had very clearly heard the yell from his position in the engineering bay the night before.

"Warning, the strange man is loose!" Pyoro informed Gascogne.

"So the boy finally woke up," she remarked. "Might as well see what he's up to."

A moment later, they walked, or in Pyoro's case, floated up, on a mess of un-disposed wrappers, empty bottles, and containers half-filled with uneaten food. And with everyone else but Meia in the center of it all, along with their new associate.

"So you started without me?" Gascogne asked as she walked closer to the group.

"Miss Gasko, you have to try this!" Dita yelled as she jumped up. "It's so different than what we eat!"

"Like that Men's food?" Gascogne asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Negative," Pyoro responded. "This food is not nearly as healthy, with over thirty-five hundred carbohydrates per complete meal."

Jura looked down in horror at the mess before her, which consisted of at least two of those meals.

"Oh, now I'm just disgusted," she remarked snobbishly, pushing her current dish away from her.

"I promise you, it won't kill you to gorge every once in a while," the stranger told her. "You tend to work it off during deep space missions."

"So what the hell is this about?" Gascogne asked.

"I am simply sharing my bounty with my new associates as a gesture of good will," the man replied as he stood and held out a hand. "Malik Browning."

Gascogne took his hand and shook.

"Gascogne Rheingau," she introduced. "And don't forget it."

"Of course, Miss Rheingau," Malik assured politely. "Now, would you care to join us for a meal?"

"Thanks, but no thanks," she replied. "I need your help getting this guy hooked up to the main computer."

"Who, the 'Pyoro', as you call it?" Malik asked.

"Just Pyoro," Pyoro growled.

"I apologize," Malik courtesied. "I didn't realize that you had artificial intelligence facilities installed."

"So you can help us?" Gascogne asked after staring at him for a short moment in amusement.

"Yes, and no," Malik replied. "Enos doesn't like any other sentient programs in the main frame."

"Enos?" Gascogne asked.

"The ship's AI," Malik replied. "Takes on the form of a demon, usually red or blue in skin color, sometimes has flames of differing colors floating nearby depending on his mood?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Gascogne told him. "I just know Pyoro here swears up and down that he'll die if he hooks up again."

Pyoro remained silent, his eyes showing themselves to be unnaturally wide, and looking off into empty space.

"Looks like Enos is just scared," Malik replied. "I would be, too, if I were blind and deaf to the world. We need to get the internal sensors back online before we can do anything else with the ship. Once the mainframe is back up with Enos in control, we'll be able to figure out what's salvageable and what's not."

"Another sleepless night, I assume," Gascogne stated.

"I'm afraid so," Malik replied. "And I'll need everyone's help."

He looked over at Dita.

"Including your's," he told her. "You're just the right size."

Hibiki started trembling in anger.

"Don't get any funny ideas!" he yelled at Malik.

"I told you once before, I'm not that kind of guy," Malik said in his defense.

"So where's Meia?" Gascogne asked, breaking away from the awkward conversation.

"I would assume laying naked and asleep under the covers in that room over there," Malik replied, pointing in the direction of one of the quarters. "She got into some heroin. You wouldn't happen to know about that, would you?"

"She sniffed some sort of powder when we were cleaning up your mess on the bridge," Gascogne replied.

"Yep, that's the stuff," Malik informed her. "At least she didn't try the LSD."

"Wha'?" Gascogne asked, the term going right over her head.

"It's a recreational drug," Malik told her. "Your friend would be in a lot worse shape if she tried that one out for size."

"And I assume you know this from experience?" she questioned, the revelation lowering her trust in this stranger.

"Of course not," he replied. "But where I come from, people used to die from accidental overdoses all the time. Especially first timers."

"Great," Gascogne remarked. "Let's get this ship fixed before I learn anything else about you."

* * *

She was going to kill him when she could move again. He had swindled her. He didn't want to help. He just wanted her out of the way.

As of this moment, Meia was lying naked underneath the sheets on the bed, as Malik had predicted. However, unlike he had predicted, she was anything BUT asleep. Hives covered her skin, and every one of her joints had locked up. Those that she could move would send agonizing jolts of pain throughout her entire body when she even twitched the tiniest centimeter.

Oh, she was going to kill him, all right. And it was going to be a nice, long death, too.


	4. Chapter 4

Malik removed another set of shaped crystals from the computer's insides, trying to determine which ones were still relatively intact. Obviously, those that collapsed after being removed were useless, and would have to be remelded at a future date, if he could find the equipment to do so. But what was even more difficult was to determine which those that were still intact were still of use.

"Why do some of these crystals glow like they do?" Gascogne asked as Malik delicately placed one of the intact specimens in her hands.

"Because they are living creatures," Malik informed her. "I was provided the technology quite some time ago by a deep space traveler I had befriended. He claimed that bio-energy was the most effecient form of data transfer. Except for their lack of durability, he has yet to prove me wrong."

What he didn't tell her was the circumstances of how the traveler had obtained the technology.

"If they're living creatures, how do they stay alive?" the older woman inquired. "All living creatures need some source of energy."

"Funny thing is, they'll feed off of just about any form of energy you provide them," Malik said. "You could shove them in soil, leave them out in the sun, or just hook them up directly to a nuclear reactor, though then you have to start pruning them because they'll grow so fast."

"So I'm assuming that the ones that are glowing are the ones that are still alive," Gascogne deduced.

"You are correct," Malik informed her. "And until I can find the equipment to revive the poor things, we're stuck with the glowing ones to choose from."

Malik lifted one of the dead crystals from the processor, which collapsed into dust and small shards a moment later. He used a small vacuum to collect the remains, then removed the storage container from the device and placed it in an ever-growing pile next to him.

"You act like you've done this several times before," Gascogne remarked.

"I honestly couldn't tell you," Malik replied as he forced a live, glowing crystal from a damaged part of the motherboard. A few shards scraped off, but Malik held it for a few seconds, and it continued to shine. He carefully handed it to Gascogne.

"So how much longer will this take?" she asked. "I don't want to spend all day out here."

"We just have to get the computer functioning enough for my AI to gain access to the ship's systems," Malik informed. "Once he has control, we can modify his personal mainframe to act as the ship's central computer. Once we get through all of that, we can determine what systems I can fix, and what we can't. If I can't fix the engines, we may have to rely on your transport to tow us out of here."

"There's no way that little thing could pull a ship this big," Gascogne informed.

"Maybe," Malik said.

He pulled one last crystal from the motherboard, completely gutting the main computer. After determining it was alive, albeit barely, he placed it with the other working crystals.

"All right, the turn out was better than I thought," he remarked enthusiastically. "Now we just need the backup drives."

* * *

Hibiki crawled behind Dita, trying his best to keep a modest distance from her. He didn't want an embarrassing repeat from when they were climbing the ladder in that mission.

"Why did he have to send US to do this?" the boy complained. "This is disgusting!"

Obviously, Malik had not been up here in a while, or he would have cleaned it by now. Dust, grime, and, somehow, oil coated the marble-textured walls of the crawlspace. He wouldn't have complained much, except for the fact that it was worse than even having to work in the factories back on Taraak.

"I think we're there," Dita remarked as she crawled into a small cavity that was tall enough to stand in.

"Great," Hibiki said as he stood. The backup computer room was a mess. Cables and equipment lay strewn around, some of which looked like it wasn't even strapped down to anything. And the technology itself appeared ancient.

Dita moved among the equipment, trying to find the casings Malik described.

"I think these are it," she mumbled as she pressed a button. Several small trays slid out of the computer, exposing rows of metal square objects.

"Here you are, Mister Alien," Dita said as she disconnected several of the hard drives and handed them to Hibiki.

Hibiki started setting the objects on the floor as Dita disconnected them from the ancient computer. He was beginning to wonder how they were going to get them back to the bridge when he located two plastic carrying cases beside where Dita stood.

"He'd better get this ship running soon, or I'm going to go nuts," Hibiki murmered. He had been the one who had volunteered for this mission in the first place, and it had just been one bad event after the other in the past fourty-eight hours.

"It's not that bad," Dita said. "I think that the Captain is very nice."

"A little too nice, if you ask me," Hibiki remarked under his breath.

Dita handed him the last of the hard drives, which he packed into the carrying cases.

"That's it," Hibiki said as he locked the case shut and handed it to Dita.

As he got onto his knees with his case, he began cursing himself inside and out. He was going to get this Malik guy back, big time.

* * *

Malik slid the last crystal into the jurry-rigged motherboard, praying it would complete the circuit. He connected it to the power supply, and a moment later, every one of the crystals began emitting a series of high and low-pitched musicle chimes. He actually got everything to work!

"Thank goodness," he remarked as he proceeded to reattach the computer to the ship's systems.

"I assume everything's working?" Gascogne asked.

"Just about," Malik informed her. After hooking in the last of the data transfer cables, he tapped on a dust-covered touch screen, bringing up a stream of unintelligible information.

"Well, looks like the BIOS is still intact," Malik mumbled as he began tapping repeatedly on the screen, bringing up a menu of some sort. After typing a few more keys, the crystals began adding a noticable humming sound to their orchestra."Power settings are stable. Let's see if this works."

Malik tapped on the screen once more, and the crystals began to hum even louder. Then, every system on the bridge activated, including a series of holographic projectors, though no readings or words could be deciphered among them. They simply projected empty screens.

"We just need those hard drives, now," Malik thought aloud.

"Did you ever think of installing a redundancy system in front of your backup?" Gascogne remarked. "It seems irresponsible of you to have not. If you were in combat, you wouldn't have time to reboot everything like this."

"I will have you know that I have a series of three redundant computer networks in addition to the mainframe and the backups," Malik informed her with a hint of iritation. "And every single one of them was disabled when I was attacked."

"Did you use the same construction on each system?" Gascogne inquired with a slightly arrogant tone.

"No, I did not," Malik replied with in a tone indicating that she had insulted him. "But it seems that all of the more recent technology I installed is fragile against whatever weapons my stalkers prefer to use. I don't even know if the backups survived. Perhaps when we return to your home, you can provide me with something better?"

"Hey, now, no reason to get upset," she told him. "I was just wondering. And yes, I probably could."

"I'm not stupid," Malik said. "I've probably been flying through deep space longer than any of you put together. The systems I install in and on this craft are strictly state-of-the-art."

"I seriously doubt either of those claims, young man," Gascogne remarked.

Malik remained silent. There was no reason to continue any further arguments.

A moment later, something clattered behind them. A large black case hit the ground, Hibiki falling right above it. He landed with a thud and a stream of curses leaving his mouth.

"Are you alright?" Dita asked as she climbed down the ladder leading into the bowels of the ship.

"What do you think?" the boy snapped as he lifted himself off of the ground.

"Are the hard drives intact?" Malik asked in a concerned tone as he neared Hibiki. He opened the case, revealing several ancient harddrives inside.

"Good," Malik mumbled as he dug one out. "Once we get this installed, Enos should be able to take control of the ship's systems.

Malik looked behind him at Gascogne.

"I need your Pyoro unit for this part," he told her.

* * *

Jura woke from abruptly from her nap. She had initially been insulted when she was told that her skills were unneeded a few hours earlier, but resigned to one of the quarters rather than argue. Even though she had got plenty of sleep the night before, going a whole twenty-four hours without rest was trying on the human body. And if she wasn't careful, she would end up with stress lines before she was thirty.

Jura stepped out of the small room and glanced around, looking for someone, anyone. It seemed that everytime she woke up, everyone else had moved to the other end of the ship. She was about to move off towards the bridge when she heard a groan from one of the other quarters. Having nothing better to do, she decided to investigate.

Upon opening the darkened quarters, she thought that no one was there until another groan filled the air. After her eyes adjusted, she realized it was Meia, naked underneath a light set of sheets. What was exposed of her body was covered in hives, and sweat covered her forehead.

"Meia, can you hear me?" Jura asked in a concerned tone as she knelt next to the bed and placed the back of her hand on Meia's forehead. She was extremely feverish.

Meia opened her eyes and stared at Jura, fury evident in them. Meia appeared to try to flex an arm, but her arm seized up and fell back onto the cot.

"I'll be right back," Jura assured her, malice on her voice. "Hang on until then."

Malik had a lot of explaining to do. It was too bad. She had actually liked him.

* * *

"All right, Pyoro, you need to follow my directions to the letter," Malik told the robot.

"Please don't make me," Pyoro begged, his eyes streaming tears.

"If you do this right, you'll be in and out before Enos can do anything too damaging," Malik informed him. He finished loading up a series of programs from the hardrive onto the computer screen, then linked the device directly to Pyoro. He then orally relayed a series of subroutines and transistors that Pyoro needed to travel through, the words he recited unintelligible to most humans.

"Now, do not hesitate, keep moving, and Enos shouldn't be able to catch you," Malik informed the robot as he typed on the touch-screen. "I'm ready to jack you in. Get ready."

Pyoro let out a wimper.

"Go!" Malik ordered, hitting an execute key.

Pyoro let out a cowardly scream before his display screen went blank.

* * *

Pyoro skipped through to the next program, dropping bits of data and activating strings of code when he was compelled to. He had yet to encounter the hostile construct, but he kept moving at an orderly pace, regardless.

He was moments away from finishing his set tasks when a booming voice echoed throughout the digital world through which he was traveling.

"Come here!" it yelled, and a moment later, Pyoro could sense something immediately behind him. In a world of numbers, the five physical senses had no place. One could only detect things through variations in the data around him.

"Please, just leave me alone!" Pyoro begged as he jumped to the next data stream. He installed and activated several programs as he flew along, just barely making it out to the next area before some sort of barrier formed around where he had been.

Pyoro had barely made it to the last location of interest when everything shifted, and a cavern-like environment formed around him, trapping him where he was. Standing in front of him was a massive, humanoid demon. His skin shifted between various shades of blood-red and a bright, flame-like blue.

"Drop anymore programs in here, and I'll make sure you suffer greatly before I destroy you," the construct threatened in a possessed voice.

Pyoro remained still for a moment, deciding on what to do. He fled.

And as soon as he fled, some force immobilized him, and he felt some sort of metaphysical power pulling at his being.

Pyoro activated the remaining programs he had stored within him, then let out a deathly scream.

* * *

Malik and Gascogne stared at Pyoro as he screamed like an insect about to be consumed.

"You did well," Malik told him.

Pyoro's body lifted into the air as he realized that he was back in his shell.

"I'm...alive," Pyoro remarked.

"Yes, and thanks to you, everything aboard the ship is back in order," Malik told him, gestering around the bridge. Almost every one of the empty hollographic screens was filled with various charts, indicators, and data streams.

"Now, let's see if I can get Enos out here," Malik remarked, walking to the computer array. After tapping several keys on the AI's storage tower, an alluring hum began emitting from the device.

All of the sudden, a red-skinned demon appeared on the deck behind Malik, standing nearly a head taller than him.

"Thank you, Malik," Enos remarked, his voice cool but very human.

"You're most welcome, friend," Malik replied.

Enos surveyed the bridge, his avatar tensing up upon spotting Pyoro and Gascogne.

"You!" he yelled, and suddenly, Pyoro came flying towards him, the robot screaming the entire way. "I won't have a second-rate intelligence dropping foreign programs into MY mainframe."

Pyoro hung upside down in the air in front of Enos's face so that the construct could better intimidate him.

"Leave him be," Malik ordered as he continued typing away on the AI mainframe.

"Are you sure?" Enos questioned. "I could take him apart string by string. He will never bother anyone else again."

"He's the only reason that you're back to operating at full capacity," Malik informed the demon. "Now drop him and get me a detailed analysis of the ship's systems."

Enos grunted, then dissapeared, dropping Pyoro to the floor.

"He's not a people person, is he?" Pyoro remarked as he floated back up.

"Nope, and neither am I," Malik replied bluntly. "So, unless you have something important to say, please leave me be."

"Pyoro..." the robot sighed, floating towards the exit corridor.

"So, what do you think?" Malik questioned, taking note of the fact that Gascogne had remained quiet through most of the ordeal, something that he thought odd.

* * *

"It's an impressive system," she answered. "Albeit full of imperfections."

"Such as?" Malik asked.

"The fact that you rely on an artificial intelligence to run your ship, for one," she observed.

"I do not require his presence in order to operate my ship," Malik retorted. "However, travelling through space alone is difficult, especailly on a mere human. Enos does what needs to be done when I'm sleeping or away, and co-pilots when I am here personally. He is far more reliable than an entire bank of autopilot and fire-control computers."

"And that's another problem," Gascogne pointed out. "A ship this size needs a crew."

"It has one, on ocassion," Malik told her, gestering to the stations that could be manned on the bridge. There was a pilot and captain's station in the direct center, with a perfect view of the front viewport and the surrounding stations. What appeared to be a combination of a communication and controller's station was situated along one wall, and three other stations that she couldn't identify were located in the middle of the bridge and along the opposite wall.

"What's an ocassion to you?" Gascogne questioned.

"Once every couple centuries," Malik remarked emotionlessly.

"You're joking, right?" Gascogne asked in an amused tone, convinced it was some sort of odd joke.

"Ya, kinda was," Malik replied in a slightly cheery and sheepish tone.

* * *

Jura stormed towards the bridge, running into Pyoro on her way.

"Watch where you're going!" she snapped.

"Pyoro!" the egg-shaped intelligence cried, speeding off towards the back of the ship.

As she entered the bridge, she noticed Dita and Hibiki hanging back near the corridor, watching as Malik and Gascogne chatted.

"What's going on?" Jura questioned them quietly.

"I don't know, but they went over my head about ten minutes ago," Hibiki remarked.

"I think they're getting along well," Dita whispered. "I thought it best to not interupt them."

Jura sighed as she placed her hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Hey, you!" Jura yelled.

"Yes?" Malik asked in a polite tone.

"You're coming with me!" she told him.

"Why?" he asked.

"You know why, sleeze ball," Jura yelled. "You did something to Meia, and now she's sick."

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," he replied calmly. "I simply provided her treatment for her ailment."

"Ya, right," Jura said as she pointed her fist at him, priming her laser ring.

"Hey, there's no reason to get hostile," Malik told her, raising his hands slightly.

"You're coming with me, NOW!" Jura ordered.

Gascogne stepped aside with her hands slightly raised.

"Not going to get in the middle of it," she resigned.

Malik sighed as he stepped forward, keeping his hands where Jura could see them.

A moment later, they were at the door of the medical ward, Malik reluctant to walk inside.

"I would prefer to not go in there, considering the current cirsumstances," he informed Jura, after having darted out of the room a few seconds earlier.

"You're going to make her better, or you're going to be finding yourself a new head," Jura threatened.

Malik sighed, then stepped into the cramped room. After adjusting Meia's sheets into a more modest position, he grabbed one of her arms, which she attempted to twitch back, though futily.

"Her joints are locked," he noted aloud. "Rash, hives, fever. It looks like she's having an allergic reaction."

"To what?" Jura asked, her weapon still pointed at Malik.

"If I knew that, she wouldn't be in her current predicament," he replied.

"Enos!" Malik yelled aloud. "Do we have any antihistamines lying around?"

A moment later, a small, half meter tall avatar of the AI appeared in mid-air in the center of the room.

"I believe there is a syringe in the medical kit immediately to your right," Enos told Malik.

Malik glanced over the wall. There were half a dozen of the kits hanging at various locations along the wall.

"Which one?" Malik asked, eying the weapon the was practically in his face.

"The one closest to the floor, I believe," Enos informed him. "Now, may I return to reactivating the ship, or have you anything else to waste my processing power with?"

"We're done here," Malik told him as he popped open the medical kit, immediately revealing a pre-filled syringe.

"Does he always talk to you like that?" Jura asked as Enos faded away, a surprised look on here face.

"He gets it from me," Malik responded as he jabbed the needle into Meia's arm.

"Hey, wait just a minute!" Jura yelled, realizing what Malik had just done.

"Five minutes," he stated as he placed a cap on the syringe and set it aside. "Five minutes, and I garuntee you she'll start getting better. Now may I return to tending my ship?"

Jura lowered her fist.

"I'll be seeing you in five minutes, then," she replied.

Malik looked her in the eye and nodded, then grabbed the used syringe. As he did, he noticed a tube of open skin cream.

"Uh oh," he remarked as he snatched it up.

"What?" Jura asked.

"Just a hunch," Malik said sheepishly as he darted out of the medical ward.

* * *

"Enos, can you do an analysis on this skin balm and figure what the active ingredients are?" Malik asked as he neared the front of the bridge.

"I'm sure I could," the AI replied, his avatar, currently dark blue, appearing in front of Malik.

Malik released the tube as he felt a force tug at it. The container floated in fron of Enos's face, and soon, a small amount of the liquid inside flew from the end.

"Let's see...two percent hydrocortozone, point five percent aloe vera, and ten percent opium extract," Enos informed Sarik.

"Opium?!" he yelled. "Who puts opium in skin cream?"

"I would assume those on the last planet we resupplied on," Enos said. "The one that the Harvest fleets completely overlooked? Seemed that you couldn't go anywhere without running into poppys?"

"I don't remember," Malik told him. "But if that was the case, it's no wonder that the fleets overlooked them. What use is a junky's organs?"

Enos stared at him for a moment in complete silence, then the avatar's face turned expressed that of concern.

"My scans show you have sustained minor brain damage," Enos told him. "Did you suffer a concussion?"

"Most likely," Malik said.

"Oh...." he heard someone coo from behind him.

Mulik turned to find Dita standing a couple meters behind him, Hibiki nowhere to be seen.

"Think nothing of it, my lady," Malik said as he turned, a slight blush forming on his face for some reason.

"I just think it's sad you can't remember," she stated, moving closer.

"I'm fine," Malik told her irritibly. He didn't want to form any sort of attachment with these people. They could very well become liabilities.

"Enos, give me a full status report on the ship," Malik ordered as he walked up to the pilot's station, seating himself.

"Where would you like to start?" Enos inquired.

"Engines," Malik decided.

"Well, frankly speaking, they are totalled," Enos informed him. "And it's a shame, really. We had just installed them, and I had yet to test their full capabilities."

"So there's absolutely no way we can rebuild them?" Malik asked.

"None," Enos replied, bringing up several screens around the captain's station for Malik to see. "Their only purpose now is to be melted down for new parts."

Malik sighed, then suddenly realized that Dita was staring at the screens from over his shoulder.

"Could you please not do that?" he snapped.

Dita took a step back.

"Sorry," she apologized.

Malik sighed.

"I'm sorry, I'm just a little stressed right now," he told her. "Isn't your boyfriend around here somewhere? Why don't you go find him?"

"I sent him to begin repairs on the forward shield array," Enos said. "He should be up the first ladder on your right."

Dita nodded her head, then sighed lightly as she left the bridge.

"She was merely being kind," Enos told Malik once Dita was out of ear shot. "I detected no elevated vitals during her attempts at communication, at least until you berated her."

"I don't need to make attachments," Malik remarked. "That much I remember."

"You don't need to make ROMANTIC attachments," Enos corrected. "But the Malik I know is not afraid to make friends, nor to protect them, or mourn over their dead bodies, if the situation was that dire."

Malik sat for a moment, pretending to read the displays in front of him. After a moment, he sighed.

"I should probably apologize," he said. "But first, the rest of the ship."

"Defenses are..." Enos started, but suddenly stopped, his avatar frozen.

"Oh my," the demon remarked.

"What?" Malik asked.

"One of the buoys was just destroyed by a particle-based weapon," he informed Malik.

"All right, what do we have in the way of weapons?" Malik asked.

"Well, originally, we would have had a pair of seven hundred millimeter railguns in turrets on the port and starboard sections of the ship, two point defense lasers in turrets located in ventral and dorsal positions, six missile launchers, and the harmonic cannon," Enos informed him. "Now, only the dorsal point defense cannons are operational."

"What about shields?" Malik questioned. "The hull alone won't be suficient protection."

"If the human named Hibiki works quickly, we can have seventy percent of our defnesive capabilites online in the next five minutes," Enos informed him.

"All right, meet me in the hangar," Malik told Enos as he jumped from the pilot's station.

He ran into the corridor, spotting Dita as she was about to dissapear up a ladder.

"Miss, may I ask for your assistance?" he yelled up.

"Ya," she replied cheerfully, sliding down the ladder.

* * *

"So what's the problem?" Gascogne asked, watching as Malik and Dita loaded some sort of massive gun magazine.

"Yes, just keep loading them like that," Malik instructed, handing Dita another handfull of shells.

He looked up at Gascogne and said, "We're about to come under attack. I need you to figure out a way to get the _Eternity_ moving."

"There's no way to do that quickly," Gascogne replied.

"Well, find a way," Malik said as he lifted another magazine and carried it over to where Dita was loading, the component nearly as tall as him.

"We could always use the Vandreads," Dita sugested as she finished filing her current magazine.

"Whatever a Vandread is, go right ahead and use it," Malik told her. "As long as my ship gets out of this storm in one piece, I'm happy."

"We don't really care about your..." Gascogne started.

"Enos!" Malik yelled, interrupting her. "Get the MACU down here, now!"

Suddenly, the storage cage holding the strange mech began opening and lowering, eventually setting the machine down on the floor in a kneeling position. The machine, on its knees, stood as tall as a Vanguard, about three times as tall as a human being.

"Equip the linear rifle, the flak pistol, and the arm blades," Malik ordered.

Long, robotic arms extended down from the ceiling, carrying a long gun that looked remotely like an extremely short Steyr Aug, oversized several times, a gigantic pistol-like device with six barrels, and a pair of long, curved blades.

"Equip the EM shielding with the Infiltrator armor over it," Malik told Enos. "Make sure it's tightened down well so they don't see me coming."

"Is there anything else?" Enos asked as his avatar appeared before them, the robotic arms at work behind him.

"Yes," Malik replied. "Don't let anything near my ship."

"Will do," Enos replied, then phased out of existance.

"That's all we have time for," Malik informed Dita, forcing the last round into the magazine.

"What exactly was all of this for?" Gascogne asked, motioning at the six magazines he and Dita had loaded.

"Thirty millimeter depleted uranium shells," Malik said as he ran towards his mech. "That rifle there is a railgun. It will propell these little babies at about fifty thousand kilometers an hour. Anything hit can say goodbye."

"So what do you intend to do all by yourself?" Gascogne questioned.

"Why, work a miracle, of course," Malik remarked as he sat into the cockpit and sealed it.

A moment later, he stood the mech up, revealing its full splendor. It appeared as if it were a warrior of old, pitch black plated armor that had no gaps in between it. Long blades ran along the arms, coming out a few meters past the wrists and elbows.

Suddenly, the mecha stumbled, and Malik strained himself to regain balance. When he did, however, he reached over and grabbed up one of the magazines, then slammed it into his rifle and pulled back a giant charge pin. A moment later, he had the other five magazines stored on the mech's back.

"See you guys on the other side," he said over the mecha's speakers, then turned the machine about and launched.

A second later, he slammed the MACU headfirst into the hangar floor, grindingg to a stop just in front of the resupply ship's cargo bay, which blocked the hangar's exit.


	5. Chapter 5

Malik sat absolutely still, his arms crossed and eyes closed as he listened during his wait. Hopefully by now, the _Crimson Eternity_ was on the move and nearing the edge of the storm. It had been several hours since he had launched, so there was no excuse for it not to be.

Suddenly, static filled the cockpit, audio signals that Malik had the MACU's comm unit scanning for. While the message was indecipherable, it indicated to him that there was an artificial energy-based transmission coming from somewhere nearby.

"...don't understand why High Command required us to come all the way out here," he heard a garbled, boyish voice remark as the static turned into decipherable words. "There's no way a ship that badly.........this long out here."

"We have our orders," Malik heard another, much older male voice reply, the message less garbled. "Until we find proof of the traitor's destruction, we will continue to search this storm, even if it takes us the remainder of the decade. Now cut the chatter."

"Roger," the younger voice complied unconvincingly.

Malik opened his eyes, glancing over all of the cockpit's instruments and video streams. They had to be extremely close for that audio to have made its way to him so clearly, as he had lost all communications with the _Eternity_ when he was only few hundred meters off.

Malik waited patiently a moment longer, his restraint soon bearing fruit. A single fighter drifted by slowly, not five meters away from the MACU. The craft was much larger than Malik's machine, at least twice as long as the suit was tall. Most fighter craft were. That was one of the the advantages of a mecha over conventional space vehicles, though smaller size often meant shorter flight times.

Malik took careful note of the fighter's design. It was based around a single, roughly cylindrical fuselage, with claw-like extrusions running along the body at dorsal and ventral positions. Towards the front of the craft was an elongated bubble-style cockpit that sank mostly into the cone-shaped nose of the craft, only protruding a meter or so away from the body, similar in design to a certain type of atmospheric craft that Malik couldn't put a label on. Along the port and starboard sides were long but stubby wings. As the spacecraft floated by, the HUD display on the MACU's forward screen brought up several schematics of the craft, one which indicated that those wings extended outwards into a delta configuration after re-entry into an atmospheric environment. While he didn't know where he had obtained this data from, he took the time to memorize it carefully, nonetheless.

"Leader, there's nothing here," the childish voice remarked a few minutes later. "We should move on before we waste anymore time."

"Agreed," the older voice complied. "Take my wing, Two."

The small fighter quickly darted forward. Malik was impressed. As far as he was concerned, he had never used this armor before, even though he knew of its capabilities. Apparently, the glossy black sheen shielded him from physical eyes as well as the armor did from electronic.

Malik stretched his arms and powered up his mecha, following unnoticed behind his prey.

* * *

Hibiki continued to force the _Crimson Eternity _along, the entire time thinking what a waste of time this was. He and Dita would be more useful in the Vandread fighting out there than playing tugboat here.

_"These enemies are unlike anything you or I have fought," _Malik had warned. _"We need to observe more than anything, and only I am capable of doing that right now."_

_Ya, right._ After the Harvest, what in this galaxy could possibly be worst?

"Mister Tokai," Enos said, his avatar appearing on the comm screen. "You and your partner are straying off course. Please correct the ship's direction by one point three degrees."

And as quickly as he came, the AI was gone. Annoying as hell.

Following the visual instructions that replaced Enos's image on the comm screen, Hibiki adjusted the Vandread's thrust so that the _Eternity,_ already hurling through space at thousands of kilometers per second, would move away from the unknown parts of the magnetic field and closer to the edge of the storm, where the _Nirvana_ lay in wait. He had to give the AI some credit. At least they didn't run back into the ice fields.

"You alright, Mister Alien?" Dita asked, looking up at him. Hibiki looked down, and realized that he was clenching his hand on top of hers.

"Ya," he replied unconvincingly, loosening his grip.

Dita pursed her lip, and looked like she was about to say something when Enos appeared on the comm screen again.

"What is it NOW?!" Hibiki yelled.

"Mister Tokai, let me beg your indulgence," the demon replied, his voice growing deep. "I need you to power down your machine for a few moments."

"Why?" Hibiki asked.

"There is no time," the construct informed him, growing agitated. "Power down now!"

"I'm not..." Hibiki started, but was soon interrupted.

Suddenly, he was slammed forward into Dita as an explosion rocked the Vandread.

"What the hell was that?" Hibiki asked rhetorically, forcing the Vandread away from the crippled ship.

"Tokai, do not leave the deflector field," Enos ordered. "I repeat, do not engage!"

"We're being shot at!" Hibiki argued as he spotted a blur dart by and disappear back into the storm.

Enos's expression formed into one of contempt, then disappeared off the comm screen.

"I think we should listen to him," Dita suggested.

"But..." Hibiki started, but never finished as a two panels separated midship on the dorsal side of the _Eternity _and a square shaped turret lifted up out of it, extending what appeared to be weapons, rangefinders, and sensors. The device had a single barrel protruding about three meters from its edge, running along the top of the turret. Another barrel, about a meter long, was located just below the larger one.

"Please remain outside of the firing solution," Enos remarked, appearing pompously on the comm screen yet again. "You can do that much, yes?"

Hibiki was about to retort with the most vile of curses when Enos's image disappeared from the comm screen yet again, and the smaller barrel on the turret began filling the space around the ship with thousands of small blue laser bolts. Suddenly, out of the storm, three blurs came charging in at the _Eternity_, their weapons blazing. Several dark red bolts lashed out from the claw-like protrusions on the crafts' fuselages, but were stopped short by the _Eternity'_s now-raised shields.

Hibiki was preparing the Vandread's cannons to fire when the larger barrel on the _Eternity_'s turret combined its fire with the smaller weapon, dozens of long, green bolts lancing out towards the unknown enemies. Several hit one of the fighters, the laser beams slicing through the craft's shields and cutting into its frame. The fighter exploded, several large chunks of fresh debris slamming into the _Eternity_'s shields, creating an avid display of fireworks.

The turret continued to track the fighter formation, the blue laser filling the space with an angry electric blue. From what Hibiki could tell, the smaller weapon did almost no damage to the fighter's shields. It was more like a tracking device of some sort.

"Mister Tokai, I need you to fire directly over the ship when I give you my mark," Enos told him, not bothering with video.

"Now you listen here...!" Hibiki started.

"Mark," Enos ordered dryly.

Hibiki, out of reflex, activated the cannon's on the mecha's back, causing them to rise over the shoulders and lock themselves into place. As soon as he was able, he charged the weapons and fired.

Suddenly, as if to meet a challenge, the two remaining fighters blasted out of the haze of the magnetic storm, this time rolling and darting about. However, they both met the cannon's blast head on. One fighter, positioned closer to the edge of the beam, was stripped of its shields and sent careening into the storm by the sheer force of the weapon. The other fighter, however, was caught dead center in one of the beams, and disintegrated under the withering hail of charged particles.

* * *

Malik continued to stalk the fighter, yet to be detected by his future victim. He was waiting for the right moment to strike, when either all of his hunters were grouped together, or when they were so split apart that he could pick them apart one by one without compromising his own life.

"Thi...Spearpoint leader, we have...pleted our scans of...area, returning to primary formation from point......five-three," Malik intercepted from one of the nearby fighters. "Please confirm."

"This is Carrier _Huntress_, we read you," Malik heard a young woman's voice reply clearly. "Continue on your present course."

_Carrier, huh?_ He would have to be more careful now that capital ships were involved. Such craft were often equipped with heavy anti-fighter weapons.

Malik stalked the fighter deeper into the magnetic storm, keeping an eye on his surroundings. At any moment, another craft might float by and sound the alarm.

Suddenly, Malik hit the reverse thrusters as the storm began to thin out to a semi-transparent state, revealing a decent sized ship before him, somewhere between two hundred and three hundred meters long. Several of the strange fighter craft were drifting around it at various angles, apparently unable to see him. But that could very quickly change.

"Still no sign of him," the pilot dubbed Two remarked. "Complete waste of time."

"Two, please commence docking procedures and report to the brig for disciplining," the carrier's controller ordered dryly.

Malik heard a very distinguishable sigh, and the fighter he was tailing darted forward and entered into one of several small compartments located along the ship's mid-line. A panel soon slid over the fighter, and the small compartment seemed to slide slightly into the ship.

Malik continued to observe for a moment longer, then began slowly activating the forward thrusters in irregular bursts, to better cloak himself in his retreat. As he distanced his MACU from the ship, a large object suddenly came flying out of the thick of the magnetic storm.

The machine was massive, easily large enough to cup Malik's MACU in its hands. It was obviously a mecha of some sort, definitely humanoid in shape, with crimson dominating the coloring on its armor, though there were hints of blue on some of the plates and green at positions where there would be devices of importance on his MACU, such as hydraulics and power couplings. His initial impression was that of a bulky man encased in a suit of plate mail, the helmet decorated with some sort of a horn that protruded over and forward of the wearer's face. But as it drew closer to the _Huntress_, he realized that on its back, almost as if they were strapped parallel to each other, were two massive crystalline protrusions that reminded him an awful lot of javelins, though the length-width ratio was too far off for them to be used as effective throwing weapons. Also on its back were a set of equally massive branch-like protrusions, the pattern reminding him of unfeathered wings, with large thrusters attached at symmetrical locations throughout them.

Malik, once more, hit the brakes, using the thrusters on the back of his MACU's body to stop himself dead in space.

"This is Spearpoint Leader to Carrier _Huntress_, reporting in," he heard the older voice say over the jacked comm link. So this was their ace. Malik had to admit, he was more than a little intimidated.

"Welcome back, Commander," the controller from the carrier replied somewhat cheerily. "I assume your patrol went well?"

"Fruitless, as was the last one," the commander replied coldly.

"Well, you will be happy to hear that you are relieved of duty until twelve-hundred hours," the controller informed him. "You may commence docking now."

Malik watched as the giant mecha edged closer towards the rear of the carrier, taking note of any more potential weapons. He believed that he had just discerned some sort of melee weapon located along the vehicle's wrists when a fighter flew up beside him.

"We have an intruder!" Malik heard a male pilot yell over the audio, one he didn't recognize. "Scramble frequencies..."

And all of the sudden, he was in the center of the hornets nest. The claw fighters were buzzing around like angry bees, and the carrier launched at least six more fighters from tubes along the front of the ship.

Malik armed his linear rifle and fired a three round burst at the fighter that had discovered him. Either it wasn't shielded, or it had yet to raise its shields, because all three rounds tore through the body, one piercing the cockpit. As Malik dove backwards towards the shielding part of the storm, another fighter, in its haste, ran into the large chunks of debris that littered the space of his victim, causing the fighter to careen out of control, huge portions missing from its fuselage.

Malik had just entered the thick of the magnetic field when his comm array intercepted an unencrypted message.

"This is Gauntlet two!" Malik heard a calm but agitated woman's voice yell. "I have discovered the location of the ship. I'm transmitting the..."

She never had a chance to finish her message as Malik triangulated her position and sprayed the remaining twenty-seven rounds in his magazine at her. He was soon rewarded with a dimmed explosion in the distance.

Malik ejected the magazine from his rifle, grasping for another off of the racks on his MACU's back. As he slammed it into his gun, a formation of three fighters buzzed through the storm, charging straight at him. He had just enough time to cock his weapon and snap off a burst at the lead fighter before he was forced to dive away from the fighter's shots. Three rounds hit the pursuer's shields, but they didn't appear to penetrate, collapsing in on themselves as they impacted.

Malik dove into the storm and cut the power to his engines, hoping to lose his attackers. He had to be the one hunting, not the one hunted. That was the entire reason he chose this armor.

Over the next few minutes, several fighters passed by his MACU and disappeared back into the storm, none appearing to have spotted him. Malik began typing away at the comm unit, trying to hack their frequency. If he could tap their communications, not only would he be able to use it to predict their movements, but also to triangulate their positions, as the storm caused an almost complete sensor blackout.

"Where is he?" Malik heard a whiny man's voice ask as another fighter came to a stop by him, its cockpit pointed in the opposite direction of his mecha.

Malik watched as his radar display began revealing the approximate locations of each of the fighters. It wasn't perfect, but it would give him a definite advantage. And his whiny friend appeared to be distanced from the group.

Malik flared his engines and charged at the fighter, baring the long blade running along the MACU's left arm. Blues and reds pulsed along the blade as the MACU reinforced it with powerful energies, the charge coming to a peak just before Malik impacted the claw fighter's shield. There was a bright flash at the tip of the blade as it made contact with the barrier and cut into it, hundreds of gigawatts of harmonic and disruptive energies discharged all at once, stripping the defense in fractions of a second. He caught the underside of the fighter near the tail end and drove the MACU forward as he cut up the fuselage, cutting all the way through the nose. The fighter was just beginning to explode as Malik darted away, searching for his next victim.

* * *

Hibiki and Dita were exhausted. They had been holding the Vandread's form for several hours now, and after that brief encounter with those fighters, their wills were literally being drained of their last ounce of energy.

"Mister Tokai, my readings indicate that Miss Dita is potentially on the verge on unconsciousness," Enos reported all of the sudden. "We are traveling at sufficient velocity to make a timely arrival at the storm's edge. Perhaps it would be prudent to separate your crafts."

"Why does she get to be called by her name?" Hibiki yelled crankily.

"I'll be fine," Dita assured the intelligence in a croak.

"It would be best for you to not overly strain yourselves," Enos told them. "It is my assumption that we will enter into combat shortly after we leave this magnetic storm."

Enos disappeared for a moment, then reappeared once more.

"And to indulge you, Mister Tokai, I appreciate Miss Dita's presence far more than yours," Enos revealed snobbishly before disappearing again.

"You wanna shoot him?" Jura asked, pulling her Dread up beside the _Eternity_. She had been performing short scouting trips into the storm since that skirmish with those unknown craft, but came up empty every time.

"I would really like to," Hibiki remarked.

"Hibiki!" Dita exclaimed. "I don't want to hear you talk like that anymore, you understand me?"

"What's got into you?" Hibiki asked, staring tiredly at the redhead.

"It's not very nice," Dita told him. "They've been nothing but helpful, and deserve our gratitude."

Hibiki sighed.

"Fine," he complied. "Let's just separate before..."

Suddenly, adrenaline shot through Hibiki's veins and he reflexively grabbed the controls as the_ Eternity_'s rear shields lit up, soon added to by the ship's tracer fire.

"Come one!" Hibiki yelled in bravado as the Vandread's cannons aligned themselves to fire.

* * *

Malik emptied the remainder of the clip at his target, then ejected it and slammed a fresh one into his rifle. These pilots were good once they got warmed up. He had only taken down two since he got the jump on that one earlier, and had wasted an entire three clips on them. Which wasn't a good thing, since depleted uranium was not cheap to come by.

Malik prepped his arm blades as three fighters dove in at his position. He managed to go silent in time to confuse their attack, and they passed below him, where he had been drifting yet seconds before. As he had predicted, the lead fighter did a one eighty almost immediately, while the others flanked around, one going starboard and up, the other port and down.

With a quick burst from his thrusters, Malik flung himself at the lead fighter, catching it just as it began to accelerate forward. He cut into the shields with one blade, stripping them away, then latched onto the fighter's front end with his free hand and legs. After a moment, he was able to lift his gun arm and jam its blade into the nose, releasing the deadly combination of energies directly into the craft's components. Parts of the fighter instantly expanded outwards like a kernel of popcorn, and Malik was tossed off by the force of the fighter's soon-following explosion.

However, the Malik suddenly found himself under fire from several different sources, and fours fighters, no longer flying formation, dove in at him from multiple directions, filling the vacuum of space with angry red bolts. Malik attempted to dodge the fire as best as he could, but failed as one of the fighters rotated in mid-space, tracking him with fire at point-blank range as the craft's pilot allowed its momentum to carry it out of his sight. Malik's MACU was sent careening by the unrestrained force of the blasts on his meager shields, and nearly fell unconscious as his head was slammed into the side of the cockpit.

However, Malik soon regained his bearings, and in a more enlightened mood. However rusty these pilots were, they obviously had top-class training, and had a perfect balance between experience and recklessness. He would have to eliminate them quickly if he intended to succeed.

Suddenly, Malik's sensors picked up a massive energy source accelerating on his position, even through the thick magnetic storm. He accelerated his MACU upwards, slamming his body down into the pilot's chair. Soon after, a bright yellow pillar of energy drove through the space where he had just been, displacing some of the storm for a few seconds in its wake.

Quickly, Malik configured his sensors to follow the trail to its source and dove after it. What kind of weapon could have done that? His ship had only one weapon of that magnitude, and it was neither functional,nor did it fire like that. Could it have been the carrier? No, that was behind him. That only left one thing.

Spearhead Leader.

Malik accelerated even faster, hoping to get the drop on his rival. As good of pilots as the claw fighters had, he should be able to to take them down, with time. No, his concern was that machine. He had to learn of its capabilities, understand its pilot, and then defeat it.

Malik continued to charge forward, eventually coming up on a sight that was both confusing and concerning. Somehow, the mecha's coloring had changed to almost completely blue, and it was inside of the sphere of the_ Eternity_'s shields, floating underneath the ship where there were no defenses.

_Coward._ Attacking a defenseless craft. Is this what they had fallen to? His own people? The...

_Earthlings?_

_Earth_...**_home_**. The place where he had come from. But how could they have changed so much since he had been there? Had he been away for so long?

Malik seized up as random images flashed before his mind's eye. Comrades and enemies, lives and deaths, happiness and sorrow.

Malik snapped back to as he neared the _Eternity_'s shields. So that's who he was. And that's who the Earthlings had become. And he was one of them, wasn't he? No, not quite. But almost.

"Enos, open me a space in the shields!" Malik ordered over a general channel. There was no way his old partner had missed that.

A moment later, as Malik had ordered, a small hole opened up in the shield, closing just as the MACU passed through. Malik locked onto the mecha with his rifle, ready to empty the entire gun into it once he was within range. The machine most likely had heavy armor and shields, and only the most powerful impacts from Malik's weapon would damage it.

"Malik, what are you doing?" Enos inquired, his face suddenly dominating the entirety of the MACU's front screen.

"Get out of the way!" Malik yelled, cutting off the comm unit.

But Enos appeared yet again just as Malik was reacquiring the lock.

"Why are you performing hostile maneuvers against a friendly craft?" Enos asked him.

Malik dove away from the giant blue mecha, avoiding collision by meters.

"What was that?!" Malik asked as he came back around for another pass.

"Mister Tokai and Miss Dita are currently piloting that craft," Enos informed him as he attempted to lock on once more. "This is the Vandread they spoke of earlier."

Malik circled around the Vandread for a few seconds, then drifted to a stop.

"Then wha...?" Malik started, but stopped as he realized his question was already answered. Locked into a forward position on its shoulders were two yellow-colored crystalline protrusions that looked like massive javelins. The mecha tracked one of the fighter formations that Malik now realized had been harassing the ship and fired, massive beams of energy discharged from them.

"Oh my," Malik remarked dryly. This meant that the other mecha, a _Vandread_, was still out there.

"Enos, get the ship out of here as fast as you can!" Malik ordered as he charged out of the _Eternity_'s protective barrier.

"Where the hell are you going?" Malik heard Hibiki yell.

"Buying you guys some time," Malik informed him. "No matter what happens, get the ship out!"

Several kilometers and a minute later, all went dark as a shadow formed over Malik's MACU. He had just found his rival.

* * *

"Unidentifiable craft detected leaving the magnetic storm," the dark-skinned Amarone reported.

"Looks like we won't have to go in after all," Magno remarked. "Open a line of communication. B.C., would you do the honors?"

"Yes, Captain," B.C. complied. A moment later, Celtic, the green-haired bridge operator, nodded her head to the commander. "This is Buzam Calessa of the Independent ship _Nirvana_ to unregistered craft. Please identify yourselves."

A moment later, a huge face appeared on the comm screen, of the likes that the Commander had never seen. Whoever it was was humanoid, but his red skin and intimidating facial features, most notably the horns, were not.

"I am Enos, artificial intelligence and current operator of the deep space explorer _Crimson Eternity_," the being reported. "I have several of your crew assisting in operations aboard and around my ship."

"Then I assume you are the one who sent out the distress signal earlier?" Magno questioned.

Enos disappeared from the communications screen for a moment, then returned, a distracted expression dominating his face.

"I would love to converse for many hours more, but three of your pilots are operating in the defense of my ship," Enos informed. "We could use any assistance that you could provide."

"Captain?" B.C. questioned.

"Is Hibiki's Vanguard or any of the Dreads around that ship?" Magno asked.

"Vandread Dita is currently within the ship's protective field along with Jura's Dread and Miss Gosko's supply ship," Ezra reported. "All have taken some degree of damage."

"From what?" Magno inquired calmly.

"From that!" Amarone reported, bringing up another window on the main screen. She zoomed in several times, a strange fighter dominating the center. They watched as it darted in at the _Eternity_ with unrealistic agility and strafed at its weakening shields, then shot away without taking a single hit from the ship's only functioning weapon.

"What is it?" B.C. questioned.

"Bart!" the Captain yelled.

A moment later, his face appeared on the command screen, the bald man from Taraak currently encapsulated in the ship's helm center.

"How may I serve you, my lady?" he asked jokingly.

"Get rid of those fighters!" she ordered. "And whatever you do, don't hit that ship!"

"Yes ma'am!" Bart complied, performing a mock salute before signing off.

* * *

Enos continued to fire relentlessly with the point-defense gun, trying to discourage the fighters from continuing their attack, though so far, unsuccessfully. After that first kill in the storm, they seemed to have become impossible to destroy.

"Miss Gascogne, you're doing an excellent job," Enos complimented the woman, who was currently in her ship, which was now properly docked to the ventral port trying to route power into the _Eternity_. "Would you please reroute more power to the shields?"

Enos continued to observe the virtual displays that floated around his being at a pace that would be confusing to biologicals. He was growing extremely concerned, as the secondary shields were about to make their last stand.

"This is going to cost you," the woman remarked as Enos suddenly felt rejuvenated, the power from supply ship replenishing those of the _Eternity_'s systems.

"I'm sure we can find something of adequate value aboard the ship," Enos assured her as he prepared the _Eternity_ for another wave of attacks.

As he was dumping power into the shields, Enos detected a huge energy spike from the ship that had been dubbed the "_Nirvana_". Enos diverted some of his processing power to investigating while the rest continued operating the ship.

Suddenly, he diverted his full attention to a number of incoming energy beams, blue in color and emitting massive amounts of raw, unrefined power. Was this what these humans considered help? Destruction of everything in the immediate area?

Enos redirected all of the _Eternity_'s shields in the direction of the incoming energy beams, for what good it would do. Perhaps, after all the times that he had escaped such situations with his life, this would be the end. It was a shame. He had yet to explore much of this space.

Enos dumped the last of the ship's energy into the shields just before impact, his final attempt at self-preservation. He wondered what it would be like. Would he feel this "pain" that Malik often experienced? Or would he simply cease?

For once in his existence, he allowed his mind to relax, to be at complete peace. He was not immortal, and obviously his time had come.

And passed. The estimated time of impact was exceeded several times over, and yet, the ship was still intact. Every one of the beams had somehow bent around the ship and drilled into the claw fighters. Four of the fighters were obliterated instantly while, somehow, two others had toughed out the blows with their shields and escaped into the storm. However, as if they were living beings, several of the beams lanced in pursuit like angry snakes. Enos tallied one notable energy spike in the storm a few seconds later.

Interesting weapon system. It reminded him of one that he had once encountered, dubbed by its designers a "plasma induction cannon". However, the energy readings of this weapon were more consistent with a laser or a direct-energy weapon rather than ionized gas, so he quickly dismissed the notion.

"This is explorer _Crimson Eternity_ to independent ship _Nirvana_," Enos transmitted. "You have my thanks for the assistance."

"You are most very welcome, _Eternity_," the one they called Captain replied. "Now perhaps we can arrange some sort of payment for our rendered services?"

"Yes, all in due time," Enos answered. "At the moment, my ship is currently in need of repairs. Can I somehow arrange for us to dock with your ship until we are capable of traveling on our own again?"

The woman grinned.

"It will cost you," she told him. "But you may remain with us for as long as circumstance requires."

"You are most kind, Captain," Enos complimented. "I am transmitting all relevant data for the procedure."

* * *

Malik unleashed another barrage as he dodged to the side, the Vandread charging towards him at a ridiculously high speed. While it was most definitely better armed and armored than his MACU and faster more, his size gave him the advantage in evasion.

However, Malik knew he wasn't going to avoid this one. Somehow, the Vandread could accelerate at a sudden and extremely high rate, turning its mass alone into a deadly weapon. Coupled with the fact that it was using a set of some sort of orbiting disks to create a wall-like shield before it, it was extremely formidable.

As the mecha closed in on Malik, he rolled around and raised both of his arm blades, the energies already pulsing through them. He knew that this shield was far more powerful than most, as he had wasted all but his last magazine pummeling away at them with his linear rifle. His only chance at this point was to create a hole large enough for him to slip through and at least disable the Vandread.

The Vandread impacted the MACU a second later, the entire battle scene suddenly drowned in a bright, red-white light. Somehow, Malik had succeeded in his plan, bypassing the shields and soon engaging the vehicle directly. However, Spearpoint Leader had also realized this, and slowed his mecha down as he bared one of his wrists, the relatively short blades on it glowing a sickly dark yellow.

Malik crossed the MACU's arms and put all of the rear thruster's full force into the attack, crashing into the Vandread's blow head-on. The two forces clashed, and for a moment, Malik thought he was holding. But the Vandread slowly began forcing him back, quickly bringing its other wrist blade to finish him.

In desperation, Malik forced his thrusters forward at their max, as he knew the Vandread would finish him if he attempted a retreat at this point. He still made no advance, grinding his blades on the Vandread's. Suddenly, he slipped, and began to adjust his thrust output when an idea formulated.

Malik put all of his power into the unbalanced thrusters, sliding further along along the blades, soon coming up on the Vandread's arm. Malik displaced his rifle into the MACU's left hand as he charged the blade on his right arm. As he broke free from the Vandread's blade and began cutting along the arm, Malik jammed the long blade into a space between the plates and discharged.

A small portion of the Vandread's armor exploded outward, and soon after, secondary explosions wracked several sections along the forearm, the wrist blade turning a dull gray.

However, the Vandread's pilot was neither stupid nor inexperienced, and had been rotating his mecha since he discovered Malik's strategy. He swung around and smashed the brunt of his working arm into the MACU.

Malik flew with the swing's force, charging his blade again as he careened on the edge of control. However, rather than using it as a discharge weapon, he jammed the blade into the Vandread's arm and cut through the armor like a knife through butter, gripping around it with the MACU's legs. He was dug in, and he wasn't letting go.

As Malik turned to fire his linear rifle, the Vandread's pilot raised his arm, and the crystalline constructs mounted on its back began flipping into place, locking themselves into cannon-like positions over the mecha's shoulders.

And Malik's MACU was meters away from the tip of one. Until now, he hadn't quite grasped how massive the weapons were.

As red energy began pulsing and building on and around the crystals, Malik pushed his forward thrusters to the max and discharged his arm blade's energies all at the tip, driving him backwards, away from the cannon's arc of fire.

However, as he dove from the Vandread, Malik noticed several of those disks were now darting around the space through which he was flying. The cannons discharged their their dark energy into two gargantuan pillars of power.

And suddenly, those pillars split, hundreds of beams lancing all over the place.

Adrenaline began pumping at ridiculous rates for Malik. If he had been fighting this monstrosity just an hour before, he would have crapped his pants.

Malik attempted to calm himself, pumping all of the MACU's excess energy that he could into the shields as he was maneuvering. However, the powerful threads of energy constantly pummeled his shields, tossing him from side to side like a rag doll.

Malik continued to maneuver, trying to avoid the deadly red web of light that threatened to consume him. His shields collapsed, and he thought he was about to die, when the beams ended. He look over at the MACU's chronometer. It had been nearly thirty seconds since the firing started.

Malik watched the Vandread as some sort of energy seemed to pulse into its wings, and it launched itself forward at him, baring its remaining wrist blade.

So its cannons and shield were overloaded. The meant it only had two weapons left. And Malik was going to reduce it down to one.

As the Vandread neared him, Malik took careful but quick aim with the linear rifle and fired at the elbow of the Vandread's working arm as he dove towards the mecha, unloading ten rounds into it, one right after the other. Though they failed to penetrate the armor, the stacked force of the shots was powerful enough to just displace the arm enough that the Vandread's blow missed Malik by centimeters. He wormed his away around the mecha's bulky frame, eventually finding himself directly behind its back.

Malik, barely taking time to register the auto lock-on mechanism, unloaded his remaining rounds on the Vandread's wings. The wings, less armored and far less sturdy than the mecha's main body, snapped like dry twigs under the raw kinetic force of the depleted uranium rounds at point-blank range.

The Vandread was already rotating about as Malik destroyed its propulsion, the cannon's once more locked in place and charging. However, the thrusters built into the mecha's body were far less precise than those of its wings, and Malik was able to easily avoid the red pillars of energy it soon unleashed.

Malik darted off into the storm, content for the moment. He had survived his first encounter with a rival most formidable, and was confidant that he would be able to defeat him. Someday.

* * *

Enos continued to scan the storm as the _Nirvana_ slowly patrolled its edge, watching for any sign of Malik's MACU. It would be a shame to lose such an asset, as Malik was the only one who knew the entirety of the _Crimson Eternity_'s access codes, which Enos needed to be able to fully operate the ship for extended periods of time.

Enos was becoming increasingly agitated at the fact that the _Nirvana_'s crew kept boarding the ship in increasing numbers. It had been alright when a couple mechanics had come aboard in order to assess damages, but now there were over two dozen humans, mostly women, exploring the various compartments of the ship, touching and displacing things that they shouldn't be. And there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop them, save venting the entire ship into space. And he could only do that if his defense programming felt that he or Malik was in imminent danger.

Suddenly, as if his mere thoughts had manipulated the universe, Malik's MACU shot out of the storm and away from the ship, soon curving in a wide arc as it adjusted to catch up with the _Nirvana_.

"Captain Vivan, the captain of the _Crimson Eternity_ has returned," Enos informed in a slightly excited tone through the comm.

* * *

Malik walked forward under the guard of Meia and two of the ship's marines. At least, that's what he assumed they were, as all of the other women, or more specifically, the girls, dressed like them that he had encountered were similarly equipped.

_Guess I didn't make a great impression on her, _Malik remarked to himself.

Several corridors and a couple lifts later, Malik found himself in a control center that he assumed to be the bridge. He had to give the creators of the ship credit. The operations platform was located in an open chamber, hanging over a beautiful garden located a level or two below. He found it amusing how they had mingled trees and flowers with crystalline sculptures of some sort.

"So you must be the troublesome young man that my pilots have told me so much about," the Captain remarked as he walked by her station, eventually stopped by his guards directly in front of it, which was an oppressive position, leaving the elderly woman towering over him even though she sat.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced," she said. "I am Magno Vivan, captain of this ship, the _Nirvana_."

"Well met, Captain Vivan," Malik complimented in an extremely formal fashion. "I have traveled a long way, and I think we have much to speak about. Can I assume that you are a representative in good faith with this system's inhabitants?"

"I am," Magno replied confidently.

"Then..." he started under his breath.

"Commodore Malik Browning of the Terra Peace Front, commander of the Second Fleet, First Echelon, at your service, ma'am!" Malik reported as he snapped to attention and crisply saluted.


	6. Chapter 6

Malik leaned against the wall of his cell, trying to find some way to settle down. It had been at least two days since he had boarded the _Nirvana_, but he hadn't had a real break until just now. All the yelling, the fighting amongst the crew, the accusing questions, the testing. If he were as old as his body, he probably would have gone insane. Either that, or tried to kill someone.

_Perhaps I should have left out the being from Earth part, _he thought. It seemed that his bluntness often got him into trouble everywhere. Perhaps, for once, it would have been more prudent to initially leave out a few things.

_No, this will work itself out_. _The first element in a successful relationship is honesty, whether it be between people or nations._ They were obviously lacking in trust for anyone associated with Earth. He did, too, and he was _from _there. It was better that they learned the truth now than during a far less convenient moment somewhere down the road.

Malik wasn't completely adamant about his origins quite yet, though. His memory seemed to be returning in random bits and pieces, and he knew he hadn't even broken the tip of the iceberg, and probably wouldn't for a while. Here he had a jumble of memories that his mind told him were eons old, and then there was another that seemed to be from more recent events. He could form almost nothing conclusive from it. Mostly flashes of battle, some memories filled with hatred, others wallowing in sorrow, and in a rare few, a painful pity. Who was he, to pity the monsters that his brothers and sisters back home had become?

One thing Malik knew without a doubt, however, was that he had rebelled avidly against the very idea of the Harvest, and was one of the first to actively move against it during its conception. For some reason, he had the impression that he had been an oddity among humans, somehow distant from every single one of them. Why had he been this way? Was it of choice, poor circumstance, ignorance? The memories relevant to this gave off a feeling of enlightenment and peace, so for whatever the reason was that he remained apart, it couldn't have been all that bad of one. Not for him, anyway.

Malik sighed, finally able to resign to darkness. Soon after he closed his eyes, he began to dream about worlds in infinity, their inhabitants diverse, exotic, and completely foreign to him. And yet, for some reason, he felt more at peace among them than even his own kind.

* * *

Hibiki went over the Vanguard's internals once more, finding nothing wrong with them. He continued to go over the parts with his tools, ensuring that the various components were secure and tightened down, though at this point, he would probably end up breaking something if he tried to force them anymore.

How had he been so stupid, so blind? A single Man aboard a ship emitting Earth transponder signals. Why hadn't he picked up on it sooner? If he was like the rest of the Earthlings, then Malik could easily be over a century old. That kind of experience in a young, built body like Malik's could be deadly, especially if he knew how to manipulate the Paksis as a weapon like that boy he had encountered during the final battle with the Harvest. It was a miracle that Malik didn't remember anything until he got back, or he might have killed them all in their sleep. Literally.

"What'cha doing?" Hibiki heard Dita's voice ask.

Hibiki crawled out of the Vanguard's cockpit, smacking his head against the top as he stood.

"Just passing time," he grunted as he rubbed his scalp while he stepped down onto the maintenance platform. "What's up?"

"I was actually wondering if you would help me with something," Dita told him.

"Like?" Hibiki questioned.

"Well, I wanted to take Mister Malik some dinner," Dita replied. "To pay him back for being so nice to us while we were on his ship."

"Don't you realize what he is?" Hibiki questioned the redhead in a dark voice.

"Yes," Dita assured him. "And?"

"The people from Earth are our enemies," Hibiki reminded her. "We were _extremely_ lucky that he was out cold when we found him. Do you have any idea what he might be capable of?"

"If he wanted to hurt us, I think he would have by now," Dita observed. "He had plenty of good chances while we were on his ship. "

"So you're not the least bit worried that he might be be someone coming for payback?" Hibiki inquired.

"Nope," Dita responded cheerily as she grabbed his hand. "Now come one!"

Hibiki sighed, allowing the girl to pull him along. Perhaps there was no loss in being a _little_ nice.

* * *

Malik cringed as the needle pierced into his spine, pain shooting throughout his entire body.

"This really isn't necessary," he told the black-haired doctor, a man that they called Duelo. "A sample from my liver or heart would be enough to prove that everything here is mine."

"There are people from Taraak and Mejere who are interested in the construction of an Earthling's body," the doctor replied coldly. "Don't worry, I'll be getting around to those, too."

"I keep telling you, I have never had a transplant of any sort in my life!" Malik yelled as he attempted to struggle, though he was tied down quite well to the medical cot by security cuffs. "The real enemy is out there, about to strike."

"Perhaps, but right now, we need to prove that what you're saying is true," Duelo informed Malik. "If you cooperate, everything will go faster."

Malik gritted his teeth as the Taraak man removed the needle from his spine.

"Bone marrow," Malik panted, an idea hitting him. Why hadn't he thought of it before?

"What?" the doctor asked as he placed the sample inside of one of the infirmary's many devices.

"Bone marrow produces a human's blood cells," Malik informed the tall man. "If I had bones transplanted into my body, my blood would have the donor's genetic markers. Compare my blood work to the tissue samples you have. If I had implants, the blood's DNA wouldn't match anything in my body."

"I'll have to run it by the Captain, but it would save a lot of time," Duelo agreed.

"Glad we're on the same page," Malik remarked. "Now hurry up so I can get out of here."

* * *

"Thank you for coming with me," Dita told Hibiki as she continued to the infirmary, carrying a couple boxes full of the freshly prepared food.

"I had nothing better to do," the boy replied unconvincingly.

"What's wrong?" Dita asked.

"Nothing," Hibiki said. "Why?"

"You're being a little distant," Dita told him.

"Am I?" he inquired rhetorically. "Sorry."

"So what'cha thinking about?" the redhead prodded.

"Well, don't you ever wonder why the people on Earth didn't just leave, like the rest of us?" Hibiki asked. "I mean, if things had become so bad, why did they decide to stay, just to turn on the people they were trying to save?"

"Maybe Mister Malik knows," Dita suggested. "We could ask him."

"Nah," Hibiki remarked. "Even if he does know, there's no way he'll talk after everything we've done to him."

"What do you mean?" Dita questioned in a concerned tone.

"Well, for one, we have him locked up in a cell," Hibiki told her. "And everything that Duelo's been doing to him..."

"What do you mean?!" Dita interrupted as she nearly yelled.

"The councils on Taraak and Mejere wanted to know how much of their bodies that Earthlings replace with parts from the Harvest, so Duelo's been testing him for the past couple of days" Hibiki informed her. "Figured they could learn something since Malik won't or can't remember anything."

"That's horrible!" Dita remarked, about to break out into a run.

"It was either Duelo or them," Hibiki told her gravely, putting his hand on her shoulder. "I was there during the conference. Their doctors didn't sound like they would be all that nice about it."

"Well, we can try to make it up to him, right?" Dita said, smiling slightly.

"I guess," Hibiki replied in a slightly disgusted tone. "What is it you like so much about him?"

"Why, are you jealous?" Dita teased in a flirtatious manner.

Hibiki's faced turned more than a little red.

"Let's just get this over with," he remarked irritably.

* * *

Malik rested on the cot mattress that the Captain had been kind enough to have placed in his cell during the last series of tests. His left leg was killing him, as they had taken the marrow sample from that side of his hip bone. He had made mention of bone marrow as a fact, not a suggestion for another tissue sample, as extracting marrow samples proved to be even more painful than a spinal tap. Though the doctor had done a good job at patching everything up, he knew that the damage done was going to affect him for the immediate future. One couldn't just will away this kind of pain, even with medicinal relief.

At least it wasn't one of the government goons Malik had heard Duelo mention. They sounded like they would treat him about as well as a coroner performing an autopsy on a dog.

Malik looked up as one of the guards began typing on his cell's keypad, Dita and Hibiki behind her. He was relieved to see some remotely familiar faces today.

"Already miss me?" Malik asked jokingly as he rose from his cot.

"Stay back," the guard ordered Malik, beginning to raise her weapon.

"Settle down," the man told her in a detached way as he leaned against the wall of his cell. "I'm not going anywhere on my own for a while."

The young woman relaxed a little, then began walking towards the entrance to the brig.

"If he causes any problems, just yell," she told Dita and Hibiki.

"Sure thing," Hibiki replied, eying Malik intently.

"We brought you some dinner," Dita informed Malik, stepping into the cell.

"I appreciate it," he courtesied. "I'm going to have to admit that I've eaten better prison food than your ship's."

"You would know, wouldn't you?" Hibiki remarked smugly.

"Hibiki!" Dita exclaimed, glaring back at the young man.

"When you've been traveling space for as long as I have, you tend to find yourself in undesirable situations from time to time," Malik confessed as he looked down at the floor. "And there is this _small _part of my nature that causes me to poke my nose in other's business."

"I'm assuming that someone didn't like that about you, right?" Hibiki said.

"I honestly couldn't tell you," Malik resigned, looking up at the boy. "I would if I knew."

"Or you do know, and you're just waiting for a chance to stab us all in the back," Hibiki retorted.

"So now that you know my birthplace was Earth, everything changes?" Malik inquired, insulted. "Even though I saved everyone's hides?"

"We would have been able to fight them off on our own," Hibiki assured.

"You sound so confidant," Malik observed arrogantly. "Perhaps when the rest of their fleet gets here, you will learn a lesson or two in humility."

"Stop it!" Dita yelled suddenly. "Hibiki, he's been helping us the entire time. Like I said before, if he wanted to hurt us, he would have by now."

"So you're taking his side, are you?" Hibiki asked defensively.

"No," Dita replied as she looked over at Malik. "You're trying to make Hibiki mad. I know he's mean at times, but could you please try to get along with him?"

"I apologize," Malik complied as he slid to the floor. "I will refrain from prodding him any further."

"I can't believe this," Hibiki remarked under his breath. "Why are you kissing up to everyone like that?"

"Because I've found that a little courtesy can bring much gain," Malik informed smuggly. "Perhaps you should try it sometime."

Dita sighed as she set the food she was carrying in front of Malik.

"Please?" she asked, the plead evident in her eyes as she held her face close to Malik's.

"Thank you for the meal," Malik courtesied, his mood suddenly changed. "Perhaps you two can keep me company for a moment?"

"I'll pass," Hibiki said. "I'll be waiting outside, Dita."

Dita stared longingly at Hibiki as he walked briskly out of the brig, sadness in her blue eyes.

"He's a good boy," Malik remarked as he popped the lid on one of the boxes.

"What?" Dita asked as she turned her attention to the man, confused.

"He's a good person," Malik told her. "Just a bit awkward. Like me."

Dita cocked her head slightly as Malik bit of part of an egg roll, quickly chewing and swallowing it.

"Go with him," Malik suggested in an almost playful whisper. "He worries about you a lot. I wouldn't want to stress him any further."

Dita stared at Malik intently for a moment, then slowly began walking off.

Malik smirked to himself as the young girl left his sight. It was amusing to watch such relationships to develop, especially one such as theirs. But thiers was destined to bring about something great. That's why he was here, after all. To ensure that things went according to plan. And at the rate things appeared to be going, it seemed that he was a little bit ahead of schedule.

* * *

Magno shook her head in amazement at the comm screen located in her private quarters. Represented on the monitor before her were two admirals, one a battle-hardened, middle-aged Man named Mallard from Taraak, the other a relatively young Woman named Amauri from Mejere. Both were aboard their respective flagships, which were currently en route to the asteroid base.

"As I informed you before, we have already tested every aspect of the Earthling's body physically possible," she repeated to the commanders. "He is who he says he is. Every cell in that body of his is his own."

"Let's assume that your readings are correct," the Female admiral mused. "I am looking at the entire file here as I speak, and your doctor noted here that his body is in an almost perfect condition. According to his blood work, he's never been sick in his life, has had no apparent exposure to any form of disease or parasite, and his cellular aging appears to be that of a newborn's. How do you explain this?"

"I'm sure all will reveal itself in its own due time," Magno assured. "However, so far, we have uncovered nothing but what the boy has already informed us to be true. Perhaps we should take to heart what he has to say."

"Boy?" Mallard blurted. "You said in your personal report that he claims to be a commodore in some sort of resistance. The 'Terra Peace Front', I believe you called it. Do you have any idea who they are?"

"I do not," Magno admitted. "The Earthling's ship locked its systems down immediately after we detained him, and he personally has been unable or unwilling to divulge anything of interest since then."

"I'm confident my people can take care of that," Mallard remarked.

"I would suggest we proceed more subtly, Admiral," Magno told the Admirals. "If he feels threatened, he may attempt an escape. From there, I can only foresee two outcomes, neither favorable to us."

"Look, Magno, I realize that you're trying to do the right thing in this matter," Amauri observed. "However, both I and my colleague have orders from our respective governments to ensure that the situation does not escalate more than it already has. If he has information on this enemy you encountered earlier, he WILL give it to us, one way or another. Any attempt on your part to interfere with that could result in undesirable consequences for you and your underlings."

"I understand," Magno sighed. "I will see what what I can learn before your arrival."

And with that, Magno cut the transmission.

_Politics._ She absolutely hated them. That's one of the lesser reasons she had become a pirate. It was so much simpler when she could just threaten someone with their life in order to get her way. The only ones she answered to then was her crew.

After a moment of peace, Magno keyed the bridge.

"B.C., please have the prisoner escorted to the conference room," she ordered.

* * *

Malik lounged in the form-fitting seat he had been assigned to, trying to look as relaxed as possible. Doing so would hopefully project confidence, something that he was hardly lacking in at the moment. If he were in any danger, Enos would take care of it.

Malik glanced around the room at the guards stationed around. There were a total of ten, all of them young girls, and all between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Most were armed with some sort of spear-like weapon, though the four closest to the door were armed with rifles of some sort. And if his experiences were worth anything, those rifles would be direct-energy weapons, just like those used by the ship.

After a few more minutes of waiting, the _Nirvana_'s captain, the old woman named Magno, rolled into the room on some sort of command chair attached to a set of magnetic tracks. That was good, because it meant he was somewhere near the bridge.

From another entrance, the dark-skinned woman called B.C., whom Malik by now had assumed was the second in command, walked in, followed by Goscogne. Malik smirked. Perhaps she would vouch for him. Goscogne seemed to be a pretty fair person.

"Do you know why you've been brought here?" the old Captain questioned Malik once everyone else was situated.

"Well, the way I see it, there are two possible reasons," Malik stated arrogantly. "Either you've decided I'm telling the truth, and plan to release me from imprisonment, or you're giving me a chance to spill my guts before you futilely attempt to force that truth from me."

"So what would you do in the case of the latter?" Magno inquired.

"Enos, lighting!" Malik yelled suddenly, quickly finding himself at the end of several of the guard's weapons.

But before they could move even the slightest centimeter, the lights cut out, covering the room with a mantle of black. Malik jumped up from his seat, grabbed one of the spear weapons from its owner and, locating the nearest of the young women with his memory, swept their feet out from under them with the blunt end of the pole.

"Enos, reactivate the lighting, please," Malik panted as he collapsed to his knees.

A moment later, a painfully bright light engulfed the room, revealing what he had done to the girls, who were pointing their weapons at Malik from the floor.

"As you can see, I would have no trouble escaping," Malik said as he tossed his weapon aside.

"I highly doubt that," Goscogne remarked in an amused tone. "You could hardly hold yourself up then. You wouldn't get far in your condition."

"I believe he's made his point," Magno observed. "Girls, you may lower your weapons and leave."

"Captain!" B.C. exclaimed.

"I appreciate it," Malik courtesied as he pulled himself into the chair that he had occupied earlier. "I assume this means that I get to live?"

"For the same amount of time that we do, yes," Magno informed him. "I assume that this information you have will help prolong that time?"

"You, along with the rest of the galaxy's human population, I fear," Malik revealed.

"Then let's start with the Terra Peace Front," Magno suggested. "You claim to be a commodore among their ranks, correct? Who are they?"

Malik glanced around the room, spotting a large screen located along one of the walls.

"May I use this?" Malik asked, gesturing at the monitor.

"Of course," the Captain agreed. "B.C."

Reluctantly, the woman walked around the conference table and handed Malik the control pad, then returned to her position near the Captain.

"Thank you," Malik told her. "Enos, please present file TPF History One."

B.C. shook her head in disdain as she sat back down. Malik had to agree. So much for the honesty thing.

A moment later, TPF H1-P1-100 dominated the main screen, with a logo making up most of the background. The main body of the image was that of a long, exaggerated sword, with angel-like wings curling around the hilt. Set in front of the hilt was an illustration of a planet, with continents barely visible.

"As you all should know, approximately one hundred fifty years ago, Earth sent out hundreds of colony ships to relocate the majority of its population," Malik narrated as a clip began playing, skimming over the cities that riddled the Earth's surface. "Overpopulation, genetic saturation, and poor government action was destroying the face of our homeworld as we knew it then. After the discovery of the Paksis Pragma by one of Earth's science vessels, a crystal-like object capable of manipulating matter on a sub-atomic level, such a mass exodus was made possible, as it was soon discovered that this crystalline construct was capable of producing almost any sort of device with proper stimulation, assuming the needed amount of resources were in range. Within a decade from the start of the exodus, dubbed later by our historians as 'Project Salvation', the Earth's human population was halved to about ten billion."

The presentation began flashing a set of blueprints, presenting a ship identical in design to the Ikazuchi.

"About one hundred years ago, the Earth's population was declining horribly. For every child born, an average of ten humans died. Each passing year, death and reproduction rates grew consistently worse. It was decided by the still-living project directors that a final wave of colony ships would be launched, equipped with the latest technology and crewed by the most genetically diverse population that could be assembled. The organization sustaining the exodus received much opposition to this final attempt at protecting humanity's future, and most of the world's governments began mobilizing forces to capture the assets of the project as soon as they were made aware of this last wave. Each nation had its own agenda, but to say the least, humanity's best interests were not on their leaders' minds."

Malik hit a key on the control pad, and a map to a large island appeared on the monitor.

"The nation of Japan proved to be one of the few exceptions," Malik continued. "The remnants of Project Salvation were evacuated to this island country, and the ships were fabricated immediately and with haste. However, as the individuals chosen for the ship's crews were smuggled into the country, riots broke out, mostly less fortunate individuals looking to save themselves or their families, which were dying off quickly due to the genetic saturation that plagued the planet. These riots were soon armed and joined by many of the world's militaries. Slowly, the Japanese Military and Salvation's supporters were forced to retreat to the location of the shipyards. At this point, those of us who were researching the Paksis's full capabilities discovered that it was actually made up of two, independently functioning halves. We decided to separate these halves, storing one aboard the colony flagship Ikazuchi to eventually provide its inhabitants with a way to return to the stars, as the resulting portions that made up the power supplies of the other colony ships were essentially mechanical clones, with lesser capabilities than the original object. We kept the other one for ourselves for the eventual use of producing of warships. By the time that the riots finally broke through to the the launch sites, several dozen colony ships were in the air, along with a small escort fleet consisting of about thirty capital ships, eighty smaller support craft, and eight hundred fighter and bomber craft. Shortly prior to the launch, I was assigned the rank of Captain and put in charge of coordinating one of the fleet's fighter-bomber wings. "

The image on the monitor was soon replaced by random clips presenting a massive space battle. Hundreds of large craft and fighters were darting angrily around each other, while bulky capital ships slowly circled each other, exchanging devastating barrages of cannon and missile fire. No single second of the video was unscathed by the destruction of a fighter or warship.

"The world's nations, now consisting mostly of genetically stagnant individuals, did not approve of the final wave's successful launch, and quickly lashed out at the departing fleet, catching up with us near the planet Mars, one of the planets that shared Earth's solar system and home to a thriving colony. Thankfully, the planet's inhabitants remained completely unaffected by the battle, and wouldn't be fully aware of what happened for years to come."

"Though roughly half of the escort fleet was destroyed, all but one of the colony ships escaped the system intact, and because of its durable design, we were able to rescue most of the crew aboard that disabled ship."

The screen changed scenes yet again, this time presenting random images of paper files and pictures of various medical equipment.

"After the survivors from both sides returned to Earth, the planet's inhabitants began research into alternate forms of reproduction. We experimented in cloning, though due to the impatience of the de facto government that had taken over the world's deteriorating political duties at the time, any chance we had in that area was completely botched, and actually proved to be a long-term disaster for the general population. Soon after that fiasco, several teams of scientist were simultaneously employed to discover ways to _preserve _an already living human's life. One such project involved massive organ and tissue transplants. At this time, I was still considered to be a military officer, and with the assistance of a number of influential politicians, began the process of peacefully ending the project's research, as there were only so many places one could obtain healthy body parts. Anyone with a hint of intelligence could see where things were headed."

The presentation changed yet again, displaying some sort of massive explosion boiling off of the Earth's surface from an orbital point of view.

"As a response to our efforts, some of the less peaceful factions of the Earth attacked the Japanese homeland, using a weapon that guaranteed almost no one would survive by rendering that land uninhabitable for centuries. What they did not realize is that the effects would eventually expand to encompass the Earth entirely."

The presentation changed again, revealing the massive machinery that now encompassed the Earth in its construction phase.

"A number of events would come to pass in the years to come, one of which was the use of the moon as a massive resource base, eventually causing it to collapse in on itself and break apart due to hasty mining. This caused permanent damage to what little of the Earth's natural systems that remained, most likely rendering the planet permanently uninhabitable. The Earth's remaining four billion living inhabitants were using those resources to construct massive dwellings in the Earth's orbit by implementing the half of the Paksis that we had kept, and most were able to safely relocate to those constructs. After years of delegating and a steady decline in the population, the majority resorted to continuing Project Salvation in a new form. _Personal_ salvation."

"The Paksis was 'procured' from the conservative organization to which I belonged, as we had managed to keep possession of it until then, fearful of what others would use it for if provided unrestricted access to its abilities. During the years prior to our loss of the Paksis, we had used it to secretly construct a large war fleet, which we had hid among the Earth's new orbital machinery in fear that that exact day would come."

Malik presented another clip of a larger, even bloodier battle than the last, fighters and ships sent careening into the Earth's atmosphere in droves by cube-like constructs that were all too familiar to everyone in the room. The Harvest.

"After gathering roughly one fifth of the surviving population around us in support, those of us against the idea of complete bodily replacement organized the Terra Peace Front, to oppose a project that we simply knew as the name 'Harvest'. A small peace-keeping force was deployed to the new Project Salvation's shipyards, meant to be an non-aggressive show of force, and to hopefully put an end to this desperate resort before things became violent. None of the fleet survived, and we have these images now only because of the brave efforts of a few volunteers who recovered the destroyed crafts' black boxes from the Earth's surface before our full retreat from the sector."

The screen changed scenes again, and the Harvest fleets were shown launching from the Earth, hundreds of flagships and dozens of command ships making up the backbone of the battlegroup.

"It was decided for us by our opponents that the Terra Peace Front would no longer take a passive approach to end the Harvest. After placing most of our supporters in cold sleep aboard a few remaining colony ships that had been in dry dock since the end of the exodus, we organized ourselves into ten fleets, and each of those fleets into four echelons. I was promoted to commodore and placed in command of the spearhead of the Second Fleet, the First Echelon, and sent with the rest of the fleet to intercept the Harvest while the Fifth through Tenth fleets proceeded ahead to evacuate Mars, the assumed target of the robotic forces. To say the least, the attack was a horrible failure, and ultimately, only the First Echelon of the Second Fleet survived with any notable part of its forces intact. By this point, those who remained at Earth had learned of our failed assault, and launched a small force of manned craft to mop up the remnants of what was now my command."

"The First Fleet, which had taken up an ambush position in empty space for the possible instance of the Harvest fleet diverting from its projected course, detected this force, and quickly moved to reinforce the surviving elements of the Second Fleet. However, in the end, we made a tactical retreat, as the Earth's manned fleet was superior in both numbers and experience. It should be noted that most of Project Salvation's living members had joined up with those who supported the Harvest, reasoning that all prior actions were made to prepare the galaxy for this one decision. As a result, much of the military experience ended up with the Earth forces, and they were able to route us with relative ease, though with unfortunately high casualties on their part."

"However, the Harvest's advance did not slow in the least, and only about five percent of Mars's population were aboard ships to be evacuated when the first elements of the Fifth fleet encountered the Harvest fleet. Those few ships were launched, and the Fifth Fleet held its ground for the longest time. Eventually, another five hundred thousand or so of Mars's inhabitants were evacuated, and the Fifth Fleet retreated, as the Harvest container ships had already landed in several places on the planet and were quickly gathering up the population. We were forced to watch in helplessness as the inhabitants of Mars, who had little to defend themselves with, became the first victims of the Harvest."

The presentation changed to a chart of the Earth's solar system, red lines slowly advancing from planet to planet, some occasionally breaking off from the main group, most disappearing soon after.

"The First, Second, and Fifth Fleets remained in-system to continue observing the Harvest's advance while the Third and Fourth fleets attempted to evacuate what they could of the system's space colonies. The rest of our forces were already occupied with escorting the colony ships out of the system, who would remain unmolested for the entirety of their journey. We would occasionally commit diversionary hit-and-run attacks on the Harvest fleet and the Earth force's newly constructed defense installations during those few days that we remained. Our largest success was being able to warn the small population of the colony on Pluto early on, though the Second Fleet was only able to evacuate a handful of children while the remnants of the First and Fifth fleets attempted to slow the combined Harvest and Earth force advance. Unfortunate to admit, that evacuation was the largest and most successful since the incident on Mars."

The chart zoomed out, soon encompassing part of the galaxy, the Harvest's red lines of advance slowly spreading from star to star. However, blue lines also began moving from system to system, though far more quickly. Occasionally, the blue would even come into contact with the red. Sometimes, the Harvest would force the blue out from a star; other times, the red dot representing a fleet would disappear. However, as a result, another Harvest fleet would often divert in that star's direction and still force the blue out. Occasionally, a system would hold out against several waves, and even more rarely, would remain unbothered after successfully defending itself many times, though one could rightfully assume that those systems were severely devastated by the end of it all.

"At this point, the Terra Peace Front had learned that direct attacks on a combined Harvest Fleet were far more costly than we could afford in lives and equipment. The larger fleets of the TPF were assigned to delay-and-divert campaigns, while the remnants of the smaller fleets were sent on reconnaissance and diplomatic missions to seek out the human colonies and prepare them to properly defend themselves. Sometimes we were successful in this mission; other times, a system, especially those with notably large populations, would take wave after wave of Harvest attacks before eventually falling. Sometimes, we would fail so horribly that a colony would not even attempt to fight, and we would be left with no option but to observe to better understand the Harvest's patterns."

Malik replaced the galactic map onscreen with video of a green and blue planet surrounded by thousands of space installations and gleaming new warships. It was something that could be considered beautiful, if only the traces of war could be removed.

"Now, nearly eighty years later, the TPF inhabits its own planet, Fuimus, yet to be discovered by the forces from Earth. We have provided sanctuary for hundreds of millions of refugees, and serve as a staging ground for the militaries of nearly a dozen worlds."

Malik hit another button, and the screen went blank.

"At least as of the last time I was in contact with them," Malik finished under his breath.

"Excellent presentation, young man," Magno complimented. "However, I am curious to how much of it is factual."

"I think everyone in this room knows how a governmental superpower works," Malik observed. "This is the standard presentation displayed to all potential protectorates at the beginning of any TPF diplomatic relations. An experienced woman like yourself wouldn't be so easily swayed by this propaganda. However, I can tell you in all honesty that we have sought to do nothing but to displace the sword that Earth hangs over our heads."

"So where were your fleets when the Harvest set its sights on Taraak and Mejere?" Magno asked. "Or the many planets we found devastated during our travels?"

"I wouldn't know," Malik answered. "I have been acting outside of the normal chain of command since Fuimus's defenses were established. My last contact with them that I can recall was a couple decades ago, and I have been out of this quadrant during most of that time."

"All right, now that that's settled, how is it you remain so young?" Magno questioned suddenly. "To my knowledge, you could only do so by resorting to what your brother's and sisters from Earth have, unless you have made some sort of discovery that would shake the entire galaxy."

"I am sad to admit that those unable to bear children among the TPF have had to resort to such measures by raiding ships en route to Earth," Malik admitted. "I, on the other hand, do not rely on such measures. I have no need to."

"Explain," Magno ordered bluntly.

"I do not often disclose the details of my condition to anyone, not even to those among my brothers and sisters back home," Malik told her gravely, staring her straight in the eye. "However, I believe that your doctor has enough proof to verify my claims. That will have to suffice for now."

"This is ridiculous," B.C. remarked. "He's already admitted that they resort to the same methods that those from Earth do. Who's to say they didn't simply stand by and let the Harvest do their dirty work for them?"

"Are you so quick to dismiss everything this kid has done for us?" Gascogne questioned the Commander. "Malik's pulled one crazy stunt after another to ensure none of our people came to harm, even before he realized who we were. That should have some merit."

Malik nodded his head in Goscogne's direction, which was returned with one of her own. She WAS a fair person, and not afraid to speak the truth as she saw it, either. It was unfortunate that he had deceived her somewhat, though he didn't like the concept of anyone getting hurt in any fashion.

"It's your call, Captain," B.C. said, glaring at him.

"Mister Browning, I think that so far you have been nothing but honest with us," Magno stated after a moment of thought. "You're free to go under one condition."

"Yes?" Malik asked.

"Keep your 'Enos' out of my ship," Magno ordered sternly.

Malik smirked.

"Of course, ma'am," he complied.

"Glad we're on the same page," the Captain said. "Now let's get down to some real business."

* * *

Hibiki was pacing aimlessly through the ship when Malik left the conference room door. He wondered what the Man was up here for. And why was he alone?

Malik glanced around, spotting Hibiki. Hibiki began turning around when the slightly older Man began limping towards him.

"Mister Tokai, this is very convenient," Malik remarked as he neared.

"What is it?" Hibiki sighed.

"Well, Captain Vivan has accepted me as a temporary member of the crew," Malik informed him. "She told me you would be able to show me to my quarters."

"Where are they?!" Hibiki asked irritably.

* * *

"Old lady!" Hibiki yelled as he walked onto the bridge.

Malik shook his head. How did this child get away with such insubordination?

"Yes?" Magno acknowledged, looking up from a datapad that had several of Malik's files downloaded onto it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, giving away my room?" Hibiki asked.

"It's not like we didn't provide you a suitable replacement," Magno remarked. "Commodore Browning did inform you that you would be rooming with Dita for the time being, right?"

"Ya, but you can't just spring stuff like this on people!' Hibiki scolded. "It's MY room!"

"If I may speak," Malik said as he walked farther onto the bridge. "It would not bother me if I boarded with Miss Dita. I was often required to share my quarters with a host of people during my time in the military service, women being no exception. It would not trouble me in the least."

Hibiki turned towards Malik, his face red in rage. Malik was afraid he might have to defend himself against the short boy once more.

"I'm staying with her!" he yelled. "You can have my stupid room!"

Hibiki stomped off to the bridge's exit.

"And keep away from Dita!" he yelled before storming out.

Magno stared off at the exit with a wide-eyed expression for a moment, then shook her head as she returned to looking over the datapad.

"Thank you," she told Malik.

"It's no problem," Malik assured her. There was a moment of awkward silence before Malik found the courage say something to break it. "Are you two related or something?"

"If you have nothing useful to say, then you may leave," the Captain informed Malik as she looked back down at the datapad. "I have no time for small talk."

"Of course, Captain," Malik complied as he began walking off.

"That was pretty bad," Malik heard someone whisper to him as he limped towards the exit.

"Come again?" Malik asked, stopping in his tracks.

One of the women manning the bridge's stations rotated her chair towards him. She appeared to be pretty young, fourteen or fifteen in age, her face decorated with red eyes and long, blue hair.

"They're together," she informed him. "And I wouldn't try to break them up. It's impossible."

"I'll remember that," Malik assured politely, though he had already figured as such. "May I have the name of my new acquaintance?"

"Misty," she told him in a giggly voice.

"Malik," he told her with a smile as he strolled off. That smile soon turned to a grimacing frown once he was facing away from her.

* * *

Malik glanced desperately left and right, trying to figure out where he was. It had been a while since he was on a ship this big, and he was lost. Big time.

From the looks of it, this appeared to be the women's part of the _Nirvana_. With one exception, the humans he had encountered in the past twenty minutes were all female. He had to be careful, or he might barge into someone's quarters by accident, or a bathroom, or a shower...

Malik shuddered as a fragment of a memory played itself in his mind. He was NOT repeating that incident again.

Malik was about to give up and ask for directions when his ears were suddenly filled with the crying of a child. And not just any child. An infant.

He looked to his left, and realized that there was a large, open door leading into a darkened room. He glanced inside, taking note of several devices that looked like glass-domed cribs. Must have been some sort of nursery.

"Hello, anyone there?" Malik yelled into the room. No answer.

After glancing up and down the empty corridor, Malik strolled into the room to check on the child. Who were these people, to leave such a treasure unattended?

Malik walked to the other side of the room, finding one of the cribs occupied by a baby girl with brown hair and eyes. She was extremely young, not even a year old. Who could just leave her like this?

"Well, who are you?" Malik cooed as he found the controls that slid the dome back. Malik picked up the child and began cradling her instinctively. He didn't know how he knew, just that he did.

But she still wouldn't stop crying. What was wrong? He lifted her up a little and sniffed. She didn't need a change. At this age, there were only a couple more things.

"I bet you're hungry, aren't you?" Malik asked, lightly rocking the infant as he began exploring the room. "Let's see if we can find you something..."

Malik spotted something on a table that looked remotely like a bottle and reached out for it. But as he grasped it, his hand froze in place.

And Malik found himself standing somewhere else, holding different child. This one was a boy, and he seemed to weigh a ton more.

Malik took note of what was in his immediate vision, as he didn't seem to be in control of his own body. He was in a kitchen of some sort, though the furnishings seemed extremely primitive. An ancient ceiling fan spun above him, the sounds it was making implying that it was powered directly by electricity. In front of him was some sort of a storage device, like a massive version of the cooler on his ship.

"Be quiet for two seconds!" Malik heard himself yell impatiently. But this person was so much different. The way he spoke, he sounded immature, inexperienced, and most of all, young.

"Why did I have to be the one who stayed home?" Malik remarked, grabbing a bottle filled with a white substance and forced it into the child's mouth, who greedily began guzzling it down.

Malik carried the child into a room branching off from the kitchen, a living space of some sort. Several pieces of furniture decorated the room, with a large, deactivated monitor setting in some sort of construct that dominated one wall. Neither the monitor nor the casing were particularly large. As a matter of fact, the room itself was pretty small.

"That's right, because _I_ was the one who woke you up, right?" Malik thought aloud as he lay the child out on one of the furnishings and sat next to him. "Even though _they_ were the ones making all of the noise. All I did was tell them to be quiet. Once! Then, five minutes later, I, remaining silent in my room the entire time, was somehow the one to blame for waking you up."

Malik rubbed his head for a moment, then crossed his arms and let out a deep breath. The emotion he was getting from this memory was not one of anger, or frustration, but mostly of sorrow. Like he was crying on the inside, but unwilling to show it.

Suddenly, the infant boy tossed his bottle away and began crying.

"What did I do _this time_?" Malik question pessimistically, lifting the child and holding him out. He looked down at the bottle and sighed, then put the child over his shoulder and began gently patting him on the back.

Suddenly, the child vomited, covering his arm and back in the milky white substance.

Suddenly, the sorrow began to overwhelm Malik, and tiny tears began streaming down his cheeks as he sighed.

"Pyoro Two!" Malik heard a whiny voice yell, causing him to snap back to reality.

A white blur flew past him, and suddenly, the child was no longer cradled in the crook of Malik's arm.

"Stay away from her!" Pyoro warned Malik as he shielded the child, his eyes a deathly glare.

"Are you her related or something?" Malik questioned in a sarcastic tone. Robots and infants did not compute in his mind.

"There, there," Pyoro cooed as his eyes softened, placing a bottle in the baby's mouth, who began sucking gently on it.

"Do you know who her parents are?" Malik asked the robot. "I would very much like to speak to them about this."

"I'm Pyoro Two's father," the egg-shaped construct replied softly, most likely to not disturb the child as she sucked on a bottle. "What would you like to talk about?"

"Get serious," Malik told Pyoro in an irritated tone. "Who are her parents? A child shouldn't be left along like this."

"I didn't mean to leave her for long," Pyoro informed him, whining defensively. "I had to warm the bottle."

Malik stared at the robot in disbelief, his face expressing that very vividly. Did this machine seriously think he was the child's father? He would have to find out who the real parents were soon. This couldn't go on.

"My mistake," Malik apologized. Better not get it started. It at least seemed to know what it was doing.

As he walked towards the exit, a feeling of peace overcame Malik, as if he had just been through the worst of days, and was finally getting a chance to rest after having triumphed. He wondered why he felt this way. He really hadn't done anything.

But he had come away one bit wiser, for he had now discovered a fifth. This one's thread did not often begin crossing others for many eons, but it did have a small and important role to play in the events soon to come. Malik's, especially. He had to protect her, now, perhaps even more than the others. That was no problem. For some reason, he felt like he already knew her.


	7. Chapter 7

Malik stared weary-eyed at the wooden bar before him. For the past week, he had been catering the Taraak and Mejere Admiralties, the entire time enduring a bombardment of prodding questions, accusing remarks, and flat out arrogance.

The Mejeran, Amauri, a reasonable, relatively open-minded woman, didn't bother him so much as the Taraak man, Mallard. Not only were the Admiral's choice of words as "colorful" as the water fowl that shared his name, but the impression Malik got off of him was that of a barely restrained killer, similar to a pit bull barking at the end of his leash. The man was dangerous, but in addition, he was also efficient, or else he would not rank among his military's top commanders. Today was the first time since they'd arrived that Malik had received any leniency from them. Now, he found it somewhat pathetic that he was spending his now precious free time in the asteroid base's bar.

Malik felt particularly ridiculous right now, here in this bar, as he seemed to be the only one dressed in a military uniform, even though he knew for a fact that about half of its occupants were crewman and marines from the Taraak and Mejeran ships currently docked with the outpost. The black-colored cover and fatigues were based on the design of a uniform belonging to an old Earth navy, with a ridiculous number of rank insignia over the left breast, and his former command's emblem over that. Since the TPF Navy didn't have a chance to design an official service-wide emblem early on, each echelon within each fleet had designed and forged its own, and each emblem stuck, at least up to when Malik had left Fuimus. The First Echelon of the Second Fleet had nicknamed themselves the "Raven Claws", thus their emblem resembled one of the large, black birds diving forward, beak gaping open savagely and claws raking at some unknown pray below it. However, the one thing that ultimately set his uniform apart from probably most others in the galaxy was the sword strapped to his back, resting in a decorative scabbard.

This was the defining feature for the TPF Navy uniform that made it unique from all of its rivals and predecessors. It had been decided that the decorative hats worn by so many naval officers by prior militaries truly had little practical purpose but to restrict one's vision. Though officers and crewman could still sport the hat appropriate to his rank while on duty, it was by no means a required element of the uniform, one that Malik happily parted with.

But the swords were an entirely different story. Each individual was provided with the blade of his personal preference, and on that blade, the TPF insignia was imprinted. Due to the cleverness of the admiralty at the time of the organizations conception, the lowest recruit's emblem had features that were an integral part of even a Grand Admiral's. Overall, the sword was a clever idea, providing a soldier with a weapon and identification simultaneously. While a sword had no place in a gun fight, it more than served its purpose in the respects of melee combat and intimidation.

Malik unbuckled the sword from his uniform and held it just below the edge of the bar as he stared at it, to avoid any questionable glances from the establishment's patrons. Though a TPF Commodore insignia was ingrained on the grip, for some reason, he knew that he had possession of this weapon for many years before the exodus began. The first thing he had done after settling into his new quarters aboard the _Nirvana_ was dig out this well-forged blade, a weapon of ancient design known as a "katana", and practice his swordsmanship against imaginary opponents for nearly an hour. The way he was able to so realistically orchestrate the scene proved to him that he was at least an adept in fighting with it

"Can I get you something?" the young woman in front of Malik asked.

"Anything without alcohol," Malik replied in a depressed tone as he glanced up. He had never developed a taste for hard drinks. He just couldn't stomach them. "Please."

The Mejeran, probably no older than nineteen, walked off with a glance that said she considered him Malik oddity. That was alright. He'd fought alone for lifetimes, now.

Malik watched her as she walked off, noting with relief the relatively unrevealing robes she wore. He completely understood the concept of expression through one's choice of dress, but many of the Mejerans seemed to take it overboard. The only times that he had seen so many people more skimpily dressed was summertime in an Old Earth ocean-side city. He had initially assumed that those few who had rescued him and the _Eternity_ were a minority, as they were all pilots. However, it was soon proven to him that they were the ones relatively _chaste_ about their wear, compared to some of the extremes that he had run into.

However, Malik quickly quelled his negative thoughts. Depending on how he looked at this, it could be either heaven or hell. Nothing wrong with a little eye-candy every now and then, so long as he didn't let it become a long-term distraction, as he feared it would. Though that most likely wouldn't be a problem here. It appeared, from his historical and psychological studies during the past week, that during their isolation from each other, the men and women of Taraak and Mejere seemed to have suppressed a good portion of sexual awareness among their populations, at least regarding the younger generations. If only they had been able to do that back in his day...

Again, Malik berated himself. He didn't even know when his era WAS. He didn't particularly want to, either. Every time he thought about his slowly-returning memories from that time, he grew depressed, cranky, or both. And here, that could cause him to come across the wrong way, big time. And from there, things would only snowball downhill.

"Mister Malik!" he heard someone call from across the room.

Malik's head snapped up as he nearly dropped his sword. He quickly leaned it against the side of the bar directly in front of him in an attempt to conceal it. Waving a sheathed blade around was about as popular as displaying a pistol without a magazine: some people just couldn't make the distinction.

"Miss Dita," Malik greeted with a nod of his head once he spotted the girl's red mane. He could count on a single hand how many women he knew of in the entire galaxy that sported both hair Dita's hair color and length. "What brings you here?"

"Not much," she replied. "Bored, I guess."

"Where's Hibiki?" Malik questioned. "I'm certain that he could assist you with that."

"Huh?" Dita asked, not understanding.

"I'm certain you two would be able to find something to do together," Malik quickly restated, realizing that his suggestion was a bit blunt. "You two should take advantage of your free time while you still have it."

"What do you mean?" Dita inquired, concern starting to form at the edge of her cheerful expression.

Malik sighed, partially at his poor choice of words _again_, and partially at the recent revelations that he had been provided.

"Take a seat," he told her, gesturing at the tall chair adjacent to him.

As Dita was settling into the backless stool, the bartender returned, carrying a tall glass filled with a drink that Malik did not recognize in the least. The fluid appeared to be reddish-green in color, filled with more bubbles than any soft drink that he had ever encountered. Perhaps he hadn't been clear in his request?

"Here's your drink," the young Mejeran said as she slid the glass across to Malik.

"Thank you, Young Miss," Malik courtesied as he slid a credit voucher out of his pocket, one of a few that Magno had been gracious enough to provide him. "Dita, is there anything you would like?"

"I'll take what he's having," she informed the bartender.

The girl glanced at Malik, her expression indicating that she was waiting for some sort of confirmation. Malik nodded as he slid the credit voucher to her, and she walked off.

"So what is it that you wanted to tell me?" Dita questioned.

Malik took a small sip of the alien substance. From what he could tell, it wasn't alcoholic, but extremely carbonated. The flavor reminded him vaguely of sour apples, but just barely. If the fruit used to make this drink was indeed related to that Earth-native fruit, it had long since evolved to adapt for its planet's conditions, its taste along with it.

"How much experience would you say you have in fighting the Harvest?" Malik asked.

"Um....I really couldn't say," Dita admitted. "I was just a pilot, for the most part."

"Would you say, then, that you have a fair understanding of their attack patterns?" Malik prodded.

"I guess," Dita replied. "Why?"

Malik ran his hand over the back of his head, then rubbed his forehead for a moment. Despite his age, things like this still made him nervous. He had to divert a little longer.

"Alright, one last questioned," he stalled. "How much leadership experience do you have? How often would you take command of a flight or squadron?"

"I was put in charge of one of the teams a few times," Dita answered.

"How large is a Dread team?" Malik inquired.

"Just a few," Dita informed.

S_o an element,_ Malik deduced, comparing her terminology with his. _Not quite what I was looking for, but at least she's not completely inexperienced._

Unable to come up with any further questions, Malik pulled a small, hand-sized datapad from a pocket inside his cover and handed it to Dita, tapping a few keys on the screen, bringing up a map of the space around Taraak and Mejere.

"All right, here's the magnetic storm," Malik informed, pointing out the fat blue line that dominated roughly a third of the screen. "This is essentially a galactic mountain range that separates us from the Earth-occupied quadrants. Until recently, we were using the interstellar transmitters that I had launched a couple weeks back as listening posts. They were operating perfectly until two days ago, when every single one stopped functioning almost simultaneously. These transmissions reached us a day later."

Malik tapped the screen the the top, and a grainy video began playing. One could barely make it out, but a long, awkwardly shaped object that vaguely resembled a cucumber could be made out in the background. Suddenly, a something engulfed the screen, and everything went static.

"Now watch this," Malik remarked as he tapped the screen again, causing the last few seconds of the video replay itself in slow motion. Dita watched silently as a mechanical body slowly came to dominate the camera's view. It resembled a Harvest cube-type robot, with its four arms and the red camera eye that dominated its body's center, but there was something different about it. This one was blue and crimson in color, with several long protrusions from the fighter's upper half that appeared to be cannons set in blister-shaped turrets. Malik hit the screen yet again, and the datapad zoomed in on some shadows in the distance and enhanced the image. More of the cube-types were revealed, but several significantly different configurations were represented. Some were equipped with small multi-missile launchers, other's carried giant rockets nearly twice the machine's size in length, and others had massive, intimidating cannons attached at the joint where the robot's upper and lower halves connected. There were most likely other variants, but the single image got the point across.

"The new Harvest fleets have been adapted for a variety of combat specializations," Malik informed Dita. "Similar images were obtained from the other transmitters prior to their assumed destruction, albeit lacking a Harvest flagship."

"Are they coming here?" Dita questioned, concern flooding her voice.

"Yes," Malik stated bluntly. "Along with a contingent of manned Earth vessels. This is why I need your help with a few things."

"How?" Dita inquired, her voice growing as serious as it could with her.

"Well, you see, your wing commander, Meia, I believe she goes by, still has a grudge against me," Malik told Dita sheepishly. "She still has sores from that little incident on the _Eternity_, and so far, has been unwilling to communicate with me in any form."

"So you want me to talk to her for you," Dita guessed.

"In a way, yes," Malik said. "That datapad has a number of combat simulations compiled by Enos based on data we have obtained from our previous encounters with the Earthlings, along with formation and command recommendations. I want you to try to get your fellow pilots to work on a few of them, because the fighter wings from Taraak and Mejere have little or no experience combating the Harvest, and have only recently begun simulations. The Admirals have already agreed for their squadrons tol be placed under the command of the _Nirvana_ and its pilots in the event of an attack. Will I be able to count on you for all of this?"

"Yes, sir!" Dita replied enthusiastically. "But you really want to put me in charge?"

"A little, yes," Malik told her before taking a large gulp from his drink, soon regretting it as an instant headache formed in his head. As the pain wore off, he realized that he had reached the part he dreaded the most. Personal business. "So Dita,..."

* * *

Magno continued to play the image over and over, enhancing various sections of the clip repeatedly, trying to identify as many of the new modifications as she could. The Earthling's were certainly learning, having rebuilt the Harvest fleets with all of these refits. But that was their most fatal flaw. The Harvest fleets were still the Harvest fleets, identical in design to their predecessors but for a few new weapons.

Still, if it weren't for those kids, they wouldn't have ever had a chance. Were this ship lacking the Vandreads, it would have been destroyed long ago. Even with those weapons, the _Nirvana_ just barely made out it of most of the conflicts in which it found itself.

What they needed was to be able to go head-to-head with the Harvest without the assistance of those weapons. They wouldn't be able to rely on them if, heaven forbid, one of the young ones were to be shot down, or if they happened to be absent, performing unknown duties elsewhere. The _Nirvana_ couldn't be with the entirety of the Taraak and Mejere fleets, which would be stationed all over the quadrant in the even of an all-out war, and they were the ones who would be fighting most of the battles.

Magno snapped her head up as a small tone filled her quarters. She deactivated the datapad and set it aside.

"Come in," Magno said as she rotated her chair.

The door slid open, revealing a seemingly troubled Dita.

"Why Dita, what's the matter?" Magno questioned bluntly. The young girl rarely ever appeared this way, even in the most dire of times. Best to quickly get to the point so that the problem may be even more quickly dealt with.

"Well, it's something Mister Malik said," Dita told her, a blush beginning to form on her face. "Do you think we could talk?"

* * *

Malik sighed as he proceed towards his new quarters on the _Nirvana_. He really wondered if he was doing the right thing, and beyond that, if he was going about it in the right fashion. At the moment, he felt like the devil, calculating how quickly things were going to happen, and how much he would have to continue manipulating events and people's actions. The sooner everything happened, the better, because parts of the entire affair could take months, if everything went right.

He quickly quelled his thoughts as the door slid open, revealing a mess. Hibiki's belongings littered the floor, though much more of it was packed into the poorly stacked boxes that lined one wall. One open container caught Malik's attention, some sort of stuffed setting toy on top of the rest of its contents. He picked it up, recognizing it to be some sort of exaggerated rendition of Mister Tokai as a Santa Claus, complete with sled and reindeer. The man smirked. This had Dita written all over it.

Suddenly, the room's door slid open, and a bewildered Hibiki strolled in with slumped shoulders, though he quickly stood erect once spotting Malik.

"What the hell are you doing?!" the boy yelled angrily, charging Malik.

"Just looking," Malik replied, slightly stunned as he held the toy out towards Hibiki. "Sorry."

"Keep your nose outta other people's stuff," Hibiki remarked as he snatched the item from Malik's hand. "You'll be a better person for it."

"I beg to differ, but I'm sorry," Malik apologized. "Would you like some assistance in carrying these?"

"If you want to be sleeping anytime tonight, you better," Hibiki informed irritably.

Malik smirked as he heaved three of the sealed boxes. Events were proceeding almost too perfectly. Time to become the devil again.

"So Hibiki," he started, using the boy's actual name. "Have you...?"

* * *

Hibiki stared at the ground in thought as they arrived at Dita's room. Apparently, Malik's words had their intended effect.

"You really think so?" Hibiki questioned. "It just sounds..."

"Glad to hear it," Malik interrupted. "So why don't we go get more..."

Suddenly, a beeping sound began emanating from one of Malik's front pockets. Apparently, he'd forgotten that he had a hand-sized datapad in there. Seemed to have them stored all over the place. As he pulled it out, rather than being presented with a blank screen, Enos's angry face dominated the datapad's monitor.

"It took you long enough," the AI remarked. "There is an urgent matter that you need to attend to. Quickly."

"Can't you wait?" Malik questioned, slightly annoyed.

"If you wish for Miss Parfet to install one of the cannon's rails backwards, then by all means, take your time," Enos informed sarcastically.

"That might actually be a problem," Malik said under his breath. "Mister Tokai, we must part ways here."

And with that, Malik darted down the corridor at a pace even he found a little fast.

* * *

"All right, I think this goes here," Parfet told the engineer helping her, one of the new male crew members. They carefully slid the electromagnet into its appropriate place, then bolted everything down.

"Miss Parfet," Enos's voice said through her helmet's radio. "Please listen to me. You are installing the weapon backwards. If we tried firing it right now, the round would penetrate through the ship's hull rather than fly out of the barrel."

"I personally machined all of these parts by hand," the young woman retorted. "I think I would know where they all went."

"Based off of blueprints that we provided," Enos reminded her calmly. "I realize that we had to adapt your technology into the process, but the fundamental design remains the same. I need you to reinstall everything correctly."

"It is," Parfet growled. "Just trust me."

"What's the problem?" Malik's voice said over the radio as a person in a black-colored space suit floated around the back of the _Eternity_, his visor shaded to the point where one was unable to see his face.

"As I said before, Miss Parfet is installing the railguns backwards," Enos informed Malik.

"Have you test fired one, yet?" Malik questioned.

"No," Enos replied. "We would cause significant damage to the ship if we were to."

"I see," Malik said. "Miss Parfet, is this particular weapon fully installed?"

"Just about," she informed. "We just have to get the casing back on."

"Don't worry about it," Malik assured. "Enos, do we have any tracer rounds left?"

"Yes," the AI replied. "Why?"

"Load one into the railgun and fire it at point five percent power," Malik ordered. "Since we're meddling with unfamiliar technology, I can't give either of you the benefit of doubt. We'll fire a test round at minimal power to determine who's right."

"I am insulted by your lack of faith in me," Enos remarked in all seriousness.

"Nothing personal," Malik assured. "Everyone, move clear of the railgun."

Parfet pulled herself along the _Eternity_, stopping when she was near the engine banks, where another team of engineers were attempting to place a few of the spare engines that the pirate base had lying around for their various craft. Adapting two different sets of technology to be compatible with each other was proving difficult, but not impossible. The team had just slid the first engine into a newly-modified housing on the ship, and were in the process of installing the second. Though it wouldn'y have anything near the _Eternity_'s original bank of eight thrusters' performance, these few engines would be enough to get it moving under its own power.

"Firing test round in five seconds," Enos informed. "Brace yourselves."

Suddenly, a wave of tingly energy washed over Parfet as small bolts of electricity shot out from railgun's components, lancing along the hull to points as close as a few meters away. Simultaneously, a blue-green light shot out from the weapon's tip, flying out of visual range about fifteen seconds later.

Parfet deactivated the shade on her suit's visor and looked up at one of the _Eternity_'s external cameras, grinning.

* * *

Malik circled around the _Eternity_ in his MACU, looking over the work that the _Nirvana_'s engineering team had performed over the past week. There was almost no sign of battle damage, new armor plates installed where the _Eternity_'s original armor was irreparable. The two point-defense turrets, currently extended outward so that the engineers could access them, were fully repaired, sleek and shiny with the new Mejeran components that were installed. The missile launchers, while only tubes in the side of the ship to begin with, were cleaned and unblocked, along with the internal components being fully modified and repaired. Even the railguns looked better now, something a bit more intimidating about them.

These people had really done an excellent job at repairing his ship. Though two more engines were still being installed to accompany the two already installed, the ship, overall, was combat ready. Malik felt a lot safer knowing such.

All that Malik needed to do now was to repair the harmonic cannon. Though he'd been working away at it for the past few days, he hadn't been able to make it functional again. The design was extremely confusing, and he'd essentially been winging it the entire time that he'd been performing repairs. But now, he was pretty sure everything was replaced and installed properly. For some reason, he just couldn't get any power into the weapon, or enough. Even Enos couldn't figure that one out. Since the railgun test, Malik had spent nearly eighteen hours straight trying to diagnose the cause of this setback. Eventually, he was forced to take a break as the need for sleep overrode everything.

Malik was about to return to the _Crimson_ _Eternity_'s hangar when the most gut wrenching feeling paralyzed him. A moment later, after it passed, he was trying to figure out what had just happened when, suddenly, his sensors, or more specifically, the _Eternity_'s sensors, went berserk.

Malik rotated the MACU towards the magnetic field. Storming out of it were four ships: a Harvest flagship, the with the same blue and crimson pattern as the new cube-types; two small, Earth-style frigate-sized craft flanking it; and taking the lead, the _Huntress_, the Earth carrier that Malik had run into during the skirmish in the magnetic storm.

That last ship was the source of his discomfort, for the most dangerous enemies of all lay within its hollow bowls.


End file.
